Local government data is the most valuable, yet least accessible dataset in the UK. It is fragmented across hundreds of council silos, buried in PDFs, and locked in legacy portals.
We started with planning applications – the most commercially valuable civic dataset in the UK. That's live. What comes next: building consents, licensing, environmental permits. Same fragmentation problem, same fix.
Next benchmark · target 100 councils
40 / 100
39 live 1 no new data for 7 days 60 to go
Silos
40 councils, 6 systems
Councils run different software – 6 portal families across the ones we cover – with different schemas and different standards. It is a fragmented mess.
No standard API
Public council access
There's no ready national feed – the government's planning-application dataset is still in beta and says it isn't ready for use. Every source is a different portal, each with its own scraper to build and keep running.
1
Record shape for all of them
Every council we cover, read into the same fields – so the same filter works on every one of them.
Live today
Not a roadmap promise. This is what's live in production right now.
Shipped
Phase 1 · Intelligence Foundation
Metis now scrapes and classifies the planning applications of 40 councils and values the builds – automatically, overnight, every morning. From a roof extension in Barnet to a mixed-use scheme in Manchester, we track it from submission through approval – and condition discharge on Idox, Ocella and Assure councils.
Shipped
Phase 2 · Lifecycle Intelligence
The lifecycle layer is live and production grade. Parent permissions are automatically linked to child discharge of conditions applications – derived from application reference formats, no manual work. The conditions tracker scrapes conditions directly from the council's own records on Idox, Ocella and Assure councils, classifies each one as requiring formal discharge or compliance-only, and tracks whether discharge applications have been submitted and resolved.
Shipped
Enterprise Layer · Project Workspace
Built on top of the planning intelligence foundation – a shared team workspace for tracking live schemes through the full planning lifecycle. Not a lead generation tool. A project management layer for teams already appointed on complex schemes.
Next
Phase 3 · Nationwide & Analytics
Our next benchmark: the 100 most active, highest-value councils in the UK. Strategic coverage where it matters most – the busiest boroughs where users get the most value. Alongside this, we're building the analytics layer: council-level approval rate trends, market dashboards, and a full API surface with webhooks and event streams for enterprise integrations.
What runs while you sleep.
A day when a council's history is loaded at once shows as a spike.
Once we've achieved nationwide planning coverage, we're exploring expansion into adjacent civic datasets. These are long-term ambitions, not near-term promises.
Exploring
Planning permissions represent private demand. Procurement tenders represent public demand. Unifying them could identify the moment a project moves from concept to contract.
Exploring
For property investors, planning is just one variable. Aggregating HMO registers, Article 4 directions, and licensing data could build the ultimate investment map.
Long-term
Aggregating council financial statements into a standardized dataset. Visualize spending trends and liquidity across the UK public sector.
These modules are subject to market validation and will only be developed after we've built the definitive planning intelligence platform.
The Moat
The data is public. The moat is normalising every council's incompatible system into one schema – then layering intelligence on top.
