Planning Leads for Builders: Find Extension and New Build Jobs Before Anyone Else Does
You know the drill. Someone gets planning permission for a two-storey extension, and by the time you hear about it — through a mate, a skip on the drive, a sign in the window — three other builders have already knocked on the door.
Council planning portals publish every application the day it’s submitted. Full address, homeowner name, what they’re building, sometimes their phone number. The information is sitting there, public, free. The problem is trawling through it. Every council runs its own clunky portal, none of them are searchable properly, and reading through PDF forms to find the applicant’s name takes forever.
Planr does that trawling for you. Every week.
How Planr finds planning leads for builders
Planr scrapes council planning portals across Herts, Essex, and London (with more councils being added) every single week. It pulls every new application, opens the documents, and extracts the applicant’s name and address — even when it’s buried in a redacted PDF.
Then it scores every application from 0 to 10 based on how relevant it is to your trade. You’re not wading through a list of shed applications and tree works. You get building work, ranked by how good a lead it actually is.
What gets scored highly for builders
- Rear and side extensions — the bread and butter of residential building work
- Loft conversions — especially ones needing dormer or roof structural changes
- New build houses — small infill sites, self-builds, plot developments
- Garage conversions — quick jobs, often paired with an extension application
- Structural alterations — knocking through walls, removing chimney breasts, basement work
Applications for a garden shed or a satellite dish get scored low. You won’t waste time on them.
What you get
Every week, log in and see a scored list of local planning applications relevant to building work. Next to each one, there’s a personalized outreach letter — already written, already addressed to the homeowner, already referencing their specific project.
Planr reads your website before writing the letter. If your site talks about loft conversions and extensions, the letter to a homeowner who’s just applied for a loft conversion will mention that. It’s not a template with a name swapped in. Download it, print it, post it. That’s the whole job.
How much time this saves
Checking council portals properly — across a few different councils, reading through documents to find names — takes most builders around 2 hours a week, if they’re doing it consistently (most aren’t, which is exactly why they miss leads).
With Planr, that becomes about 10 minutes: log in, scroll the scored list, download the letters you want to send. Over a month, that’s roughly 7 hours back. Over a year, more than 3 working days.
Pricing and free trial
- Starter — £29/month. 1 council.
- Growth — £59/month. 3 councils.
- Pro — £79/month. 15 councils.
Every plan includes the AI scoring and personalized letter generation. Start with a 7-day free trial — no card needed, and you get 3 letters to try out for real, on real applications.
FAQ
Do I need to be VAT registered or a limited company to use Planr? No. Sole traders, limited companies, partnerships — doesn’t matter. If you’re doing building work and want leads, it works the same.
Will I be competing with other builders who also use Planr? Multiple builders can use Planr in the same area, same as multiple builders can check the same planning portal manually today. The advantage is speed and consistency — most tradespeople don’t check portals every week, so just showing up reliably puts you ahead.
What if the homeowner already has a builder lined up? Some will. Planning permission is granted before most homeowners have signed with a contractor, which is exactly why this works — you’re often the first proper letter through the door, not the fifth.
Can I pick which councils I get leads from? Yes. You choose your councils based on your plan (1, 3, or 15), and you can pick the ones you actually work in.
Do the letters look AI-generated? No — they read like a normal, professional letter from a local builder. No robotic phrasing, no “As an AI.” They reference the homeowner’s actual project and your actual services.
Ready to stop missing jobs that are sitting in public records? Start your 7-day free trial — no card required.