Essex

Colchester planning data

7,056 planning applications from Colchester. 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. 11 pieces of information are filled in on at least 90% of records.

7,056

Applications

—

Enforcement notices

805

Appeals

2021–2026

Date range

What Colchester decides

Colchester has approved 83.31% of the 5,441 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 below the middle of the pack (89.18%).

83.31%

Approved, of 5,441 decided

Median days to a decision

Average days

What it mostly decides

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

Application type	Applications	Share
Full	3,567	50.6%
Conditions	1,090	15.4%
Certificate	481	6.8%
Tree	423	6.0%
Other	423	6.0%

How approval rates and decision times vary across the country →

What Colchester 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 Colchester actually provides each one, across all 7,056 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 Colchester 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`	7,056	100.0%
Application type `application_type`	7,056	100.0%
Case officer `case_officer`	7,056	100.0%
Description of the works `description`	7,056	100.0%
Council reference `reference`	7,056	100.0%
Status `status`	7,056	100.0%
Status (standardised wording) `status_normalized`	7,056	100.0%
Date received `received_date`	7,049	99.9%
Ward `ward`	7,044	99.8%
Applicant's name `applicant_name`	6,919	98.1%
Postcode `postcode`	6,383	90.5%

Partial — use with care

Information	Records with it	Coverage
Agent's name `agent_name`	5,765	81.7%
Decision `decision`	5,705	80.9%
Decision date `decision_date`	5,704	80.8%
Decision (standardised wording) `decision_normalized`	5,698	80.8%

Rarely or never published

Information	Records with it	Coverage
Appeal decision `appeal_decision`	203	2.9%
Appeal decision (standardised wording) `appeal_decision_normalized`	203	2.9%
Standardised type `standard_type`	0	0.0%

Not published by this council

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

Agent's company Agent's email Agent's phone Alternative reference Who decided it (officer or committee) Type of development Map coordinates (easting) Map coordinates (northing) Officer's recommendation

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 Colchester 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=81569&limit=5"

Council id for Colchester is 81569. Full API reference for developers →

Get free access to Colchester data

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