Northern Ireland

Belfast planning data

6,166 planning applications from Belfast. Ask questions about them in plain English from ChatGPT or Claude — no coding, about two minutes to set up — or pull them straight into your own software. 15 pieces of information are filled in on at least 90% of records.

6,166

Applications

—

Enforcement notices

—

Appeals

2018–2026

Date range

What Belfast decides

Belfast has approved 96.1% of the 4,156 applications it has decided since January 2023. Across the 225 councils with a comparable caseload the range is 71.37% to 99.14%, so this is at or above the middle of the pack (89.18%).

96.1%

Approved, of 4,156 decided

119

Median days to a decision

168

Average days

What it mostly decides

The mix of application types Belfast handles — useful for telling whether your kind of application is routine here or unusual.

Application type	Applications	Share
Full	3,910	63.4%
Conditions	867	14.1%
Other	659	10.7%
Advertisement	423	6.9%
Listed building	307	5.0%

How approval rates and decision times vary across the country →

What Belfast actually fills in

A "field" is one piece of information on an application — the decision date, the applicant's name, the address. Councils fill these in inconsistently, so this table measures how often Belfast actually provides each one, across all 6,166 records. Anything listed as reliable you can count on; anything lower, check the council's own record before relying on it.

Once this data is connected to ChatGPT or Claude you can just ask "what information does Belfast actually fill in?" and get these same numbers back. How to connect →

Reliable — 90% or more of records

Information	Records with it	Coverage
Address `address`	6,166	100.0%
Application type `application_type`	6,166	100.0%
Description of the works `description`	6,166	100.0%
Map coordinates (easting) `easting`	6,166	100.0%
Map coordinates (northing) `northing`	6,166	100.0%
Date received `received_date`	6,166	100.0%
Council reference `reference`	6,166	100.0%
Status `status`	6,166	100.0%
Status (standardised wording) `status_normalized`	6,166	100.0%
Ward `ward`	6,166	100.0%
Case officer `case_officer`	6,162	99.9%
Agent's name `agent_name`	6,129	99.4%
Applicant's name `applicant_name`	6,036	97.9%
Alternative reference `alternative_reference`	5,835	94.6%
Postcode `postcode`	5,721	92.8%

Partial — use with care

Information	Records with it	Coverage
Agent's company `agent_company`	5,351	86.8%
Agent's email `agent_email`	5,345	86.7%
Decision (standardised wording) `decision_normalized`	5,222	84.7%
Decision `decision`	5,219	84.6%
Decision date `decision_date`	5,147	83.5%
Standardised type `standard_type`	3,331	54.0%

Rarely or never published

Information	Records with it	Coverage
Agent's phone `agent_phone`	151	2.4%
Officer's recommendation `officer_recommendation`	129	2.1%
Appeal decision (standardised wording) `appeal_decision_normalized`	0	0.0%

Not published by this council

Belfast's portal has been verified not to publish these fields at all — different from a field that exists but is rarely filled in.

Appeal decision Who decided it (officer or committee) Type of development

Get this data

Ask it in ChatGPT or Claude

Connect it once with your email address, then ask questions like "which extensions were refused in Belfast last year?" or "what's the planning history of this address?" — no coding, about two minutes to set up. Setup guide →

Or call it from your own code

curl -H "X-Api-Key: pk_..." \
  "https://ukplanningapi.co.uk/v1/applications?council_id=166&limit=5"

Council id for Belfast is 166. Full API reference for developers →

Get free access to Belfast data

500 lookups a month, free. No card, no password — we email you a sign-in link and you're in.