Hertfordshire

Watford planning data

3,537 planning applications from Watford. 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. 17 pieces of information are filled in on at least 90% of records.

3,537

Applications

—

Enforcement notices

779

Appeals

1976–2026

Date range

What Watford decides

Watford has approved 80.24% of the 3,123 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%).

80.24%

Approved, of 3,123 decided

Median days to a decision

59.2

Average days

What it mostly decides

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

Application type	Applications	Share
Householder	1,449	41.0%
Certificate	557	15.7%
Full	514	14.5%
Tree	298	8.4%
Conditions	267	7.5%

How approval rates and decision times vary across the country →

What Watford 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 Watford actually provides each one, across all 3,537 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 Watford 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`	3,537	100.0%
Description of the works `description`	3,537	100.0%
Date received `received_date`	3,536	100.0%
Council reference `reference`	3,537	100.0%
Application type `application_type`	3,533	99.9%
Who decided it (officer or committee) `decision_level`	3,531	99.8%
Applicant's name `applicant_name`	3,522	99.6%
Status `status`	3,522	99.6%
Status (standardised wording) `status_normalized`	3,517	99.4%
Ward `ward`	3,513	99.3%
Case officer `case_officer`	3,504	99.1%
Agent's email `agent_email`	3,485	98.5%
Decision `decision`	3,403	96.2%
Decision date `decision_date`	3,403	96.2%
Decision (standardised wording) `decision_normalized`	3,396	96.0%
Postcode `postcode`	3,336	94.3%
Alternative reference `alternative_reference`	3,268	92.4%

Partial — use with care

Information	Records with it	Coverage
Agent's name `agent_name`	3,079	87.1%
Agent's phone `agent_phone`	2,587	73.1%

Rarely or never published

Information	Records with it	Coverage
Standardised type `standard_type`	208	5.9%
Appeal decision `appeal_decision`	102	2.9%
Appeal decision (standardised wording) `appeal_decision_normalized`	102	2.9%
Agent's company `agent_company`	31	0.9%
Type of development `development_type`	0	0.0%
Officer's recommendation `officer_recommendation`	0	0.0%

Not published by this council

Watford'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)

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 Watford 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=455&limit=5"

Council id for Watford is 455. Full API reference for developers →

Get free access to Watford data

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