South London

Merton planning data

5,969 planning applications from Merton. 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. 13 pieces of information are filled in on at least 90% of records.

5,969

Applications

—

Enforcement notices

683

Appeals

2023–2026

Date range

What Merton decides

Merton has approved 86.08% of the 4,395 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%).

86.08%

Approved, of 4,395 decided

Median days to a decision

79.1

Average days

What it mostly decides

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

Application type	Applications	Share
Full	2,281	38.2%
Tree	1,049	17.6%
Certificate	733	12.3%
Conditions	627	10.5%
Other	477	8.0%

How approval rates and decision times vary across the country →

What Merton 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 Merton actually provides each one, across all 5,969 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 Merton 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`	5,969	100.0%
Council reference `reference`	5,969	100.0%
Applicant's name `applicant_name`	5,962	99.9%
Application type `application_type`	5,964	99.9%
Case officer `case_officer`	5,961	99.9%
Description of the works `description`	5,966	99.9%
Date received `received_date`	5,965	99.9%
Status `status`	5,963	99.9%
Status (standardised wording) `status_normalized`	5,963	99.9%
Ward `ward`	5,931	99.4%
Who decided it (officer or committee) `decision_level`	5,749	96.3%
Decision `decision`	5,553	93.0%
Decision date `decision_date`	5,542	92.8%

Partial — use with care

Information	Records with it	Coverage
Decision (standardised wording) `decision_normalized`	5,292	88.7%
Postcode `postcode`	5,246	87.9%
Agent's name `agent_name`	4,180	70.0%
Agent's company `agent_company`	2,651	44.4%
Standardised type `standard_type`	2,635	44.1%
Map coordinates (easting) `easting`	985	16.5%
Map coordinates (northing) `northing`	985	16.5%

Rarely or never published

Information	Records with it	Coverage
Alternative reference `alternative_reference`	65	1.1%
Appeal decision `appeal_decision`	64	1.1%
Appeal decision (standardised wording) `appeal_decision_normalized`	64	1.1%
Agent's email `agent_email`	0	0.0%

Not published by this council

Merton'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 phone Type of development 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 Merton 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=136&limit=5"

Council id for Merton is 136. Full API reference for developers →

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