Planning designations at a location
planning_designationsEvery national planning designation affecting a postcode or coordinate in one live call, from conservation area and listed building to green belt, flood zone, Article 4 and brownfield.
Same call over REST
Planning designations/v1/planning/designationsNot connected yet? Connect your assistant. Sign in with your MarketCode account; no API key needed.
Reference
What planning_designations answers
The constraints a planner reads first, in one call. Thirteen designations are checked live against planning.data.gov.uk for the location you give: conservation area, listed building, green belt, Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (National Landscape), national park, flood zone, Article 4 direction, brownfield land register, ancient woodland, heritage at risk, tree preservation order, air quality management area and scheduled monument. Each is a yes, a no, or unknown.
It is free, and it is the tool behind the designations block of the site dossier, so a developer's first screen and a lender's collateral check read the same layers.
The full description, as the assistant reads it
Give either postcode (full UK postcode) or location as "lat,lng". UK only.
Reference
When to use it, and when not to
Use it before anything else on a site or a property: it tells you whether permitted development rights are likely to have been withdrawn (Article 4, conservation area), whether consent will involve heritage (listed, scheduled monument, heritage at risk), whether landscape or habitat policy applies (National Landscape, national park, ancient woodland), whether the site is favoured (brownfield register) or constrained (green belt), and whether the flood position needs a sequential test. For the applications themselves use planning_applications, which returns the planning authority and its portal, because council portals are not machine-readable. For the surface-water band of a single property use property_flood_risk.
Inputs
Before you call it
Give either postcode as a full UK postcode or location as "lat,lng". A postcode is placed at its centroid, which is fine for a designation that covers the street and imprecise for a boundary that runs through it; a coordinate from address_resolve is exact.
- postcode
- The postcode must be a full UK postcode ("SE22 8HN"), not a district. Where a tool works at district grain it truncates the postcode itself.
- location
- Coordinates are WGS84 latitude and longitude, the order a map gives them. A postcode is accepted wherever
locationis, and is usually the easier input.
Example
An example call to planning_designations
Use the MarketCode tool planning_designations with {"postcode":"SE22 8HN"} and show me the result.{
"error": "HTTP 502",
"detail": "The origin web server returned an invalid or incomplete response to Cloudflare. This typically indicates the origin is overloaded or misconfigured."
}The call failed with these arguments; the status and message are shown rather than an invented body.
Inputs
Arguments planning_designations takes
| Name | Type | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| postcode | string | No | |
| location | string | No |
Reference
Things that catch people out
- A failed check is unknown, never absent. The lookups are live; if one fails the response says unknown for that designation. Do not tell anyone a site is unconstrained on the strength of a failed check.
- England only. planning.data.gov.uk covers England. A Welsh postcode returns unknowns, not clears.
- Designations are not permissions. Being on the brownfield register is a signal that the authority expects housing there; it is not a consent. A clear run of noes still needs the local plan and the application history.
Usage
How to run planning_designations in your assistant
Ask your assistant in plain English, for example:
"Use the MarketCode tool planning_designations for <address or area>.
Show the result and the credits charged."
The arguments the assistant will send, for the example on this page:
{"postcode":"SE22 8HN"}The connect steps for Claude, ChatGPT, Codex, Cursor and Claude Code are on the MCP page.
Skills
Skills that use planning_designations
- Valuation report: An indicative valuation for one address: the range, the comparables and adjustments, the index position, the EPC, flood and planning context, and the reasoning, with every figure cited to the tool it came from.
- Site and unit sourcing: A shortlist of land or units matching your criteria, scored, with the registered owner resolved for each and a recipient list ready for outreach.
- Due diligence report: A property due diligence report: title and ownership, history, EPC and council tax, flood and designations, nearby activity, cross-source disagreements and the cross-reference findings that join them, with a traffic light.
- Deal analysis: A first-pass appraisal of a site or asset: plot utilisation, planning position, market evidence, value and a residual against the cost assumptions you supply.
- Planning check: Every designation and constraint at an address, recent applications nearby and the flood position, laid out the way a planner reads them.
Price and licence
What it costs, and where the data comes from
planning_designations is free over MCP and over REST, and the two surfaces share one credit balance. Free calls need a signed-in account or an API key and appear in your usage, but they never touch your balance.
Credits are granted on sign-up and bought in packs; the pricing page lists every call.
Sources
- planning.data.gov.uk
National planning designations and the local planning authority register
Open Government Licence v3 · England
- Environment Agency
Risk of Flooding from Surface Water and Flood Zones
Open Government Licence v3 · England
- Historic England
National Heritage List for England
Open Government Licence v3 · England
- Natural England
National Landscapes, national parks and ancient woodland
Open Government Licence v3 · England
Related
Tools used with planning_designations
- Site appraisal dossier5 credits
site_appraisalEverything known about ONE site, assembled and judged — the site dossier.Pairs with this - Planning authority for a locationFree
planning_applicationsThe local planning authority for a location and its planning-portal URL.Pairs with this - Flood risk for a propertyFree
property_flood_riskEnvironment Agency surface-water flood risk for a property.Pairs with this - Search land or units by criteria8 credits
sourcing_searchFind land parcels or residential units matching investment criteria — the sourcing tool. Give a `location` (place or area name) or a `bbox`.Pairs with this - Resolve an address to a UPRN8 credits
address_resolveResolve free-text address to canonical record (UPRN for UK).Same product - Property summary4 credits
property_summaryOne-call summary of a property: what it is, what building it belongs to,Same product
Glossary
Terms used here
- Conservation area: An area a local planning authority has designated for its special architectural or historic character, where demolition and many external changes need consent.
- Listed building: A building on the National Heritage List for England, protected by grade (I, II* or II); any work affecting its character needs listed building consent.
- Article 4 direction: A direction by a local planning authority withdrawing specified permitted development rights in an area, so work that is normally automatic needs a planning application.
- Permitted development: Changes an owner may make without a planning application, granted nationally by the General Permitted Development Order, subject to limits and to local withdrawal by Article 4.
- Green belt: Land around cities designated to prevent urban sprawl, where new building is inappropriate except in defined circumstances; one of the designations MarketCode checks live.
- Brownfield land: Previously developed land; local authorities keep a register of brownfield sites suitable for housing, which MarketCode reads as a designation.
- Flood zone and surface water risk: The Environment Agency's two flood layers: fluvial and tidal flood zones (1 low, 2 medium, 3 high) and the Risk of Flooding from Surface Water, both returned per property.
FAQ
Questions about planning_designations
How much does `planning_designations` cost?
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planning_designations is free over MCP and over REST, and the two surfaces share one credit balance. Free calls need a signed-in account or an API key and appear in your usage, but they never touch your balance.
Which assistants can run `planning_designations`?
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Any MCP client: Claude (claude.ai, Claude Desktop, Claude Code), ChatGPT in developer mode, Codex and Cursor, each documented on the MCP page. You sign in with your MarketCode account over OAuth; there is no key to paste, and the connection is read-only.
Where does the data come from?
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Read from planning.data.gov.uk, Environment Agency flood data, Historic England national heritage list for england and Natural England national landscapes, national parks and ancient woodland. Coverage is England (planning.data.gov.uk).
Does `planning_designations` change anything?
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No. The tool is annotated read-only on the server, so it never writes to your data or ours and an assistant can call it without a confirmation step.
Does it return planning applications?
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No. It returns designations. planning_applications returns the local planning authority for the location and the URL of its portal, where the applications are; MarketCode does not scrape council portals.
Is a conservation area check the same as a listed building check?
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No. A conservation area is an area designation by the local authority that controls demolition, trees and, often through Article 4, external changes. A listed building is an individual designation by grade that protects the building inside and out. A property can be one, the other, both or neither, and the response reports each separately.
How does the sourcing search use these?
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sourcing_search accepts some designations as filters (green belt, brownfield register, conservation area, flood zone). Where a filter's backing column is still being populated the response names it under filters not yet enforced; run this tool on the shortlist to confirm.
Try planning_designations in your assistant.
30-minute call. We'll connect your assistant live on a real address.