UK Solar Panel Planning Applications — Installer Leads

Find solar panel, solar PV, and battery storage planning applications across 381 UK planning authorities — every one a live buying signal. A homeowner or business that submits a planning application for solar is actively investing in an installation right now. A large solar farm application means a developer about to procure panels, mounting systems, inverters, batteries, and electrical contractors at scale.

This actor turns that public data into a lead list: site addresses, planning agent details where the council publishes them (~40% of records), decision status, and direct links to council portals. Export to CSV and start calling.

No API key needed. No login required. Just configure your region and run.

Who this is for

• Solar installers — find homeowners and businesses in your service area with live or newly permitted solar applications. Undecided applications are prospects mid-decision; permitted ones are ready to build.
• Battery & storage vendors — battery storage applications (included in the default search terms) signal buyers speccing systems now.
• Mounting & racking suppliers — large solar array and solar farm applications mean bulk procurement is coming.
• Electrical contractors — every permitted solar install needs a qualified electrician. Target the postcode areas where permissions are being granted.
• Renewables marketing agencies — build regional demand maps and prospect lists for installer clients.
• B2B suppliers to solar farms — track Large applications to reach developers before they've chosen suppliers.

Features

• Solar search baked in — preset terms solar panel, solar pv, photovoltaic, solar array, battery storage, fully editable (narrow to solar farm only, or add heat pump, ev charging)
• Search any council or go nationwide across all 381 planning authorities
• Filter by decision status (Undecided = live pipeline, Permitted = green-lit projects)
• Postcode radius search (find solar applications within X km of your base)
• Filter by application size (Small = householder installs, Large = solar farms)
• Extract the planning agent company and address where published (~40% and ~56% of records; applicant details are not published upstream)
• Monitor-friendly: designed for weekly scheduled runs per region

Coverage: 381 planning authorities across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Typical usage: weekly lead monitor per region

Set up a weekly scheduled run on Apify with your service area, and get a fresh lead list every Monday:

{
    "postcode": "M1 1AD",
    "radiusKm": 40,
    "appState": ["Permitted", "Undecided"],
    "daysBack": 7,
    "maxResults": 200
}

Each run returns only the last 7 days of applications within 40 km of Manchester — new leads only, no repeats. Connect the dataset to Google Sheets, email, or your CRM via Apify integrations.

Input parameters

The input of this scraper should be JSON containing the filter configuration for your search. Possible fields are:

searchTerms: (Optional) (String[]) Solar/renewables terms to match in application descriptions. Terms are OR-combined — an application matching ANY term is returned. Multi-word terms match as exact phrases. Default is ["solar panel", "solar pv", "photovoltaic", "solar array", "battery storage"].

councils: (Optional) (String[]) List of council names to search. Leave empty for a nationwide search across all 381 planning authorities. Type any UK council name — for example: "Wiltshire", "Cornwall", "Manchester".

appSize: (Optional) (String[]) Filter by development size. The values can be: Large, Medium, and Small. Leave empty for all sizes (recommended — most domestic solar installs are Small/householder, solar farms are Large). Default is all sizes.

appState: (Optional) (String[]) Filter by decision status. The values can be: Permitted, Undecided, Conditions, Rejected, Withdrawn, Referred, and Appeal. Default is ["Permitted", "Undecided"] — green-lit projects plus the live pipeline.

daysBack: (Optional) (Number) How many days back to search from today. For decided applications, this filters by decision date. For undecided applications, this filters by submission date. Range: 1–365. Default is 30. Set to 7–14 for weekly scheduled runs.

postcode: (Optional) (String) UK postcode as the centre point for a radius search. Requires radiusKm to be set. Example: "M1 1AD", "BS1 4DJ".

radiusKm: (Optional) (Number) Search radius in kilometres from the postcode centre point. Only used when postcode is provided. Range: 1–100. Default is 10.

appTypes: (Optional) (String[]) Filter by application type. Leave empty for all types. Common values: Full, Outline, Householder. These match as substrings.

maxResults: (Optional) (Number) Maximum total results to return. The actor stops fetching once this cap is reached. Range: 1–5,000. Default is 500.

Input examples

Nationwide solar leads (last 30 days)

{
    "appState": ["Permitted", "Undecided"],
    "daysBack": 30,
    "maxResults": 1000
}

Solar farms only (B2B suppliers)

{
    "searchTerms": ["solar farm", "solar array", "photovoltaic park", "battery energy storage"],
    "appSize": ["Large"],
    "appState": ["Permitted", "Undecided"],
    "daysBack": 90,
    "maxResults": 500
}

Installer service area (specific councils)

{
    "councils": ["Cornwall", "Devon", "Somerset"],
    "appState": ["Undecided"],
    "daysBack": 14,
    "maxResults": 300
}

Tips

• Undecided applications are the warmest leads for installers — the applicant is planning an install but may not have committed to a contractor. Permitted applications are best for equipment suppliers and electricians.
• Leave appSize empty: domestic solar installs are classed Small and would be missed by the parent scraper's Large/Medium default.
• Start with a low maxResults (e.g. 20) and your own postcode to verify the data matches your patch before scaling up.
• Combine this actor with a contact enrichment actor — take the agentCompany and address fields and enrich them with phone numbers and emails. (The applicant/developer name is not published by the upstream source; see the note on contact details below.)
• Please keep in mind that multi-council or multi-status queries require a 62-second delay between each query to respect rate limits. The default (nationwide, 2 statuses) runs in ~2 minutes; a 3-council × 2-status query takes ~6 minutes.

Developer and applicant contact details

Every record includes portalUrl - a direct link to the council's own page for that application. Most UK councils run Idox Public Access portals (roughly 70% of the country), and those pages publish the applicant name, applicant address, agent name and case officer.

This actor does not fetch them. It reads the PlanIt aggregator, which returns the literal string "See source" for those fields instead of the values - "see source" meaning the council's own portal. Rather than export placeholder text dressed up as data, the actor drops those fields entirely, so an empty field is honestly empty.

If you need applicant and developer names at scale, we run that as a managed enrichment service. It fetches each application's council portal page and returns the applicant/agent details, resolving on the majority of Idox-covered councils and returning null - never a guess - where a council does not publish them. Message me via my Apify profile with the councils, volume and fields you need.

You can of course do this yourself for small volumes: open portalUrl and read the Details tab.

Compute unit consumption

Since the underlying data source enforces a rate limit of approximately 1 request per minute, compute unit consumption depends on the number of queries (councils × statuses × sizes):

• Nationwide, default input: ~2 minutes, ~0.05 compute units
• 3 councils × 2 statuses: ~6 minutes, ~0.1 compute units
• Weekly regional monitor (postcode radius): ~2 minutes, ~0.05 compute units

Scraped solar planning application data

Each dataset item is one planning application with 50+ fields (coverage varies by council):

{
    "council": "Wiltshire",
    "address": "Manor Farm, Church Lane, Bishopstone, Salisbury",
    "postcode": "SP5 4DB",
    "description": "Installation of up to 22 solar panels on the roofs of the modern barns adjacent to the road.",
    "appType": "Full",
    "appSize": "Small",
    "appState": "Permitted",
    "decidedDate": "2026-07-02",
    "startDate": "2026-05-11",
    "agentCompany": "GreenSpark Renewables Ltd",
    "agentTel": "01722 000000",
    "latitude": 51.0742,
    "longitude": -1.8926,
    "portalUrl": "https://development.wiltshire.gov.uk/pr/s/planning-application/...",
    "planitUrl": "https://www.planit.org.uk/planapplic/Wiltshire/PL/2026/04321/",
    "reference": "PL/2026/04321",
    "planitId": "Wiltshire/PL/2026/04321"
}

Core fields: council, address, postcode, description, appType, appSize, appState, decidedDate, startDate, agentCompany, agentTel, latitude, longitude, portalUrl, planitUrl, reference, planitId.

Extended fields (where the council publishes them): applicantAddress, agentAddress, applicationType, status, decision, decidedBy, dateReceived, dateValidated, targetDecisionDate, consultationStartDate, consultationEndDate, wardName, parish, district, nDocuments, nComments, docsUrl, commentUrl, mapUrl, and more.

Export to JSON, CSV, or Excel in one click from the Apify Console, or pull via the Apify API.

Bugs, fixes, updates, and changelog

This scraper is under active development. If you have any feature requests, you can raise an issue from the actor's Apify Store page.

Need something more custom?

Need a different vertical (heat pumps, EV charging, wind), webhook alerts for new applications in your patch, or contact enrichment built in? Raise an issue from the actor's Apify Store page and tell us what you need — custom builds are usually turned around quickly.

Data source

All data comes from PlanIt, which aggregates publicly available planning data from UK local authority portals. The data is published by councils under statutory obligation — this actor provides structured, filterable access to it.