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How do I monitor a site for changes?

There are two ways to set up standing monitoring, depending on what you want to watch.

Option 1: monitor a saved site​

If you've already saved a site (see Saving sites), the simplest form of monitoring is switching it on from the site's card: this re-runs the full constraint survey weekly and alerts you if a new constraint entity appears — a new designation, or a dataset back-filling a record. This needs a Pro plan (or a seat on Team/Practice).

Option 2: create a standing watch on an area or district​

From Watches in the app, select Watch an area (for planning applications) or Watch districts (for ownership changes), depending on what you're trying to track.

Watching an area for planning applications​

  1. Search for a place — postcode, street or place name.
  2. Choose how to define the area: the ward it sits in, the local planning authority, or a radius around the point. (planning.data.gov.uk has no name search of its own, which is why area watches start from a point rather than typing a ward name directly.)
  3. Choose which applications matter to you: type (Full, Outline, Amendment, Heritage, Trees, Telecoms, Advertising, Other), status (Undecided, Permitted, Rejected, Withdrawn), and size (Small, Medium, Large). An authority-wide watch needs at least one filter, so it doesn't fire on every application in the district.
  4. Optionally, leave on the parcel-split toggle — "tell me when a land parcel here is subdivided" — which watches HM Land Registry's INSPIRE parcel index for the same area, on its own monthly cadence. This is on by default for a new area watch.
  5. Name the watch and create it.

Watching postcode districts for ownership changes​

  1. Select Watch districts and type the outward codes you want (for example LS9, LS10, BD1) — districts are typed, not browsed from a list, since most people know their own patch.
  2. Choose whether to also include company filings (charges, strike-offs) for companies that hold titles in that district.
  3. Create the watch. Several outcodes create several individual watches, each with its own timeline, pause switch and health.

This tells you when a company acquires or disposes of titles in that district, grouped by company, with title numbers and the data month — a company new to the register buying in your patch is called out separately. Because HM Land Registry publishes CCOD/OCOD monthly, alerts arrive once a month, from the drop after the watch was created.

Watching a local plan's lifecycle​

  1. Select Watch local plans and search for the council by name.
  2. Add one or more authorities, then create the watch.

You'll hear about it the week a new document is published — a draft allocation, a consultation document, an adoption statement — checked weekly against planning.data.gov.uk.

Managing an existing watch​

Open a watch's card to see its timeline of alerts, pause or resume it, or adjust its filters (application type/status/size, or the parcel-split and company-filing toggles). Deleting a watch stops all future alerts for it immediately.

What you'll never get​

No watch replays historical activity — you only hear about what happens after you create it. And no watch, on any feed, will ever surface a private individual's name or a property address; see Understanding ownership data for why that's a hard rule, not a setting.