Open-source intelligence (OSINT) professionals are constantly seeking new and innovative ways to gather information. In the United Kingdom, where personally identifiable information (PII) is less readily available compared to countries like the United States, investigators must often think outside the box to find addresses connected to a person or business. One often overlooked but valuable source of information is planning permission requests. This article explores how and why OSINT professionals should consider incorporating planning data into their OSINT workflows.

The Value of Planning Permission Data

In the UK, whenever someone intends to construct, modify, or demolish a structure on a piece of land, they must first seek and gain approval from their local council. Every local authority in the UK is mandated to make these local planning permission applications publicly available, which they do through online portals. 

When the right council can be determined, planning permission records can be a goldmine of information. Each request captures the personal information of the occupant/applicant, which includes full names, addresses, and sometimes contact details. In addition, planning requests also commonly include floorplans and images of the property. The PII available can help to:

1. Connect individuals to specific addresses
2. Identify property ownership or occupancy
3. Reveal relationships between different individuals
4. Uncover business activities or investments
5. Provide insights into an individual's financial status or plans

Challenges in Accessing Planning Data

Accessing planning permission data is a cumbersome process, fraught with several challenges, which include:

• Decentralised Information: Each local council maintains a planning portal, and there is no overarching national database of planning requests. This results in a fragmented landscape of data sources that require investigators to know each council area where the person or business owns any property.
• Limited Search Capabilities: Most council portals don't allow searches by an individual's name, requiring investigators to already know the subject's street address or postcode.
• Time-Consuming Process: Searching multiple council websites individually can be extremely time-intensive, especially when investigating subjects with potential connections to multiple areas.
• Risk of Missed Information: If an investigator is unaware of a subject's connection to a particular area, they may miss crucial planning data from that location entirely, particularly when a subject is connected to multiple properties.
• Inconsistent Data Formats: Different councils may present planning data in varying formats, making it difficult to standardise and compare results.

Best Practices for Manually Leveraging Planning Data

To make the most of planning permission data in investigations, OSINT professionals should:

• Find the right local authority: Either use a search engine with a search like “Birmingham permission portal”, use the UK government search tool at https://www.gov.uk/search-register-planning-decisions, or use https://searchplan.co.uk/.
• Search the portal: Planning portals come in a range of formats, depending on their provider. Investigators can search by keyword, address, postcode, and sometimes an applicant’s name. Additionally, a map feature lets investigators view and filter applications based on their location. 
• Process results: Planning portal results are based on keyword matches for a postcode or street name. Investigators should review these for entities linked to their investigation.

• Review the content: Planning records include relevant content for investigators to analyse and capture like applicants' names, home addresses, floor plans, internal images, and more.
• Cross-reference results: Planning portals are just one data source. Investigators should seek to corroborate and verify the information collected with other sources like the electoral roll, Land Registry, insolvency records, and Companies House.

Integrating Planning Data into Investigations with Cradle

Planning permission requests represent a valuable, yet often underutilised, source of intelligence in the UK. By incorporating planning data into their investigative processes, OSINT professionals can uncover new leads and hidden assets, and build more comprehensive profiles of their subjects.

Public Insight’s Cradle breaks down the barriers to accessing this data, empowering investigators to search nationally for all planning permission requests connected to an entity's name, alongside other crucial sources of addresses. 

Cradle addresses the key challenges faced by OSINT professionals when seeking to locate an individual or business, offering:

• Comprehensive Coverage: Public Insights aggregates planning permission, insolvency, business formation, and electoral roll data across the UK, eliminating the need to search multiple sources.
• Flexible Search: Cradle allows searches by address, person's name, or business name, significantly expanding the ways investigators can query address data.
• Time Efficiency: By providing a single point of access to nationwide address data, Cradle dramatically reduces the time required to conduct comprehensive searches.
• Increased Discovery: The ability to search across address data sources simultaneously means investigators are less likely to miss crucial information due to geographical limitations.
• Standardised Results: By consolidating data from various sources into a unified format, Cradle makes it easier to resolve results to the right entity.

Learn more and sign up for a trial today at www.publicinsights.uk.