Merseyside

Sefton planning data

6,015 planning applications from Sefton. 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.

6,015

Applications

—

Enforcement notices

7,018

Appeals

1999–2026

Date range

What Sefton decides

Sefton has approved 89.81% of the 4,976 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%).

89.81%

Approved, of 4,976 decided

Decision times can't be measured here — Sefton doesn't publish both a received and a decision date on enough records. The nationwide range across councils that do is 31 to 299 days.

What it mostly decides

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

Application type	Applications	Share
Householder	2,043	34.0%
Full	1,192	19.8%
Other	673	11.2%
Conditions	652	10.8%
Amendment	441	7.3%

How approval rates and decision times vary across the country →

What Sefton 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 Sefton actually provides each one, across all 6,015 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 Sefton 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`	6,015	100.0%
Application type `application_type`	6,013	100.0%
Description of the works `description`	6,015	100.0%
Council reference `reference`	6,015	100.0%
Status `status`	5,998	99.7%
Status (standardised wording) `status_normalized`	5,998	99.7%
Ward `ward`	5,999	99.7%
Applicant's name `applicant_name`	5,893	98.0%
Case officer `case_officer`	5,813	96.6%
Decision `decision`	5,638	93.7%
Decision date `decision_date`	5,638	93.7%
Who decided it (officer or committee) `decision_level`	5,622	93.5%
Decision (standardised wording) `decision_normalized`	5,617	93.4%

Partial — use with care

Information	Records with it	Coverage
Postcode `postcode`	5,388	89.6%
Agent's name `agent_name`	4,865	80.9%
Standardised type `standard_type`	4,446	73.9%
Agent's company `agent_company`	4,326	71.9%

Rarely or never published

Information	Records with it	Coverage
Appeal decision `appeal_decision`	73	1.2%
Appeal decision (standardised wording) `appeal_decision_normalized`	73	1.2%
Agent's email `agent_email`	58	1.0%
Agent's phone `agent_phone`	0	0.0%
Alternative reference `alternative_reference`	0	0.0%
Type of development `development_type`	0	0.0%
Officer's recommendation `officer_recommendation`	0	0.0%

Not published by this council

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

Map coordinates (easting) Map coordinates (northing) Date received

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 Sefton 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=13&limit=5"

Council id for Sefton is 13. Full API reference for developers →

Get free access to Sefton data

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