What’s being done
Planning in Portsmouth
Find an application, see what is planned near you, and explore the planning records the council publishes as open data.
- Find or comment on an application ↗Search the council’s planning register by address or reference. Comments go to the council, not this site.
- What’s planned near me?Your ward’s planning records, brownfield sites and local projects.
- Explore published planning dataShared-house applications, brownfield land, conservation areas and listed buildings.
What the records show
- Shared-house applications cluster in a few wards. Fratton (44), Nelson (36), Central Southsea (35) account for 40% of the 284 change-of-use applications in the council’s HMO register (validated 26 June 2009 to 16 July 2026). Shared housing and HMOs →
- Brownfield land and the housing shortfall. The council’s brownfield register lists 159 sites with room for at least 12,698 homes as published (11 entries carry an asterisk in the register and are counted at their stated number). Government counted 308 homes delivered against 2,702 required in the 2025 Housing Delivery Test (2022/23–2024/25). A site on the register is not a permission or a start. Homes and homelessness → · The five main sites →
- Heritage shapes what can change. 25 conservation areas and – listed buildings lie inside the city boundary.
Ward by ward
Coverage: shared-house (HMO) change-of-use applications in the council’s HMO register, validated 26 June 2009 to 16 July 2026; “recent” means validated 10 November 2025 to 16 July 2026, the latest date in the register. Conservation-area tree notices 2013 to 2024. Brownfield and heritage records as published on 9 November 2026.
| Ward | HMO applications since 2009 | Recent (dates above) | HMO register records per 100 homes | Brownfield sites | Listed buildings | Tree notices 2013–2024 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Baffins | 8 | 0 | 0.3 | 4 | 6 | 0 |
| Central Southsea | 35 | 0 | 10.9 | 2 | 4 | 118 |
| Charles Dickens | 24 | 0 | 10.6 | 46 | 122 | 28 |
| Copnor | 18 | 3 | 1.6 | 3 | 0 | 0 |
| Cosham | 10 | 0 | 0.5 | 12 | 21 | 5 |
| Drayton and Farlington | 3 | 0 | 0.1 | 5 | 14 | 0 |
| Eastney and Craneswater | 21 | 1 | 1.9 | 12 | 32 | 243 |
| Fratton | 44 | 2 | 2.4 | 5 | 6 | 0 |
| Hilsea | 17 | 2 | 1 | 11 | 6 | 5 |
| Milton | 20 | 1 | 0.7 | 7 | 11 | 6 |
| Nelson | 36 | 1 | 1.5 | 17 | 15 | 0 |
| Paulsgrove | 4 | 0 | 0.3 | 5 | 2 | 0 |
| St Jude | 18 | 1 | 4 | 13 | 68 | 480 |
| St Thomas | 26 | 1 | 7.7 | 16 | 148 | 242 |
0 means none recorded in the published subset. Records without a usable location are not in any ward: 114 tree notices and 1 brownfield site. Register records are licence entries, not properties.
Largest brownfield sites
| Site | Ward | Hectares | Homes (minimum) | Planning status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| City Centre North | Charles Dickens | 13.14 | 1600 | Permissioned |
| Portsmouth City Centre | no location | 18.68 | 1600 | Not permissioned |
| Tipner East | Nelson | 12.13 | 1056 | Permissioned |
| Tipner West | Nelson | 29.39 | 1000 | Not permissioned |
| Debenhams, Commercial Road | Charles Dickens | 0.79 | 569 | Not permissioned |
| Somers Orchard (former Horatia and Lemington Houses) | St Thomas | 3.37 | 566 | Permissioned |
| Port Solent | Paulsgrove | 12.28 | 500 | Not permissioned |
| Fratton Park & the Pompey Centre | Milton | 12.61 | 460 | Not permissioned |
Conservation areas (25)
Hilsea LinesKing StreetStanley Street, SouthseaRochester RoadMilton LocksGunwharfMile End, LandportEssex RoadCastle RoadOld PortsmouthTheTerracesSt Mary's Churchyard, FrattonHM Naval Base and St George's SquareSt Andrew's Church, EastneyThe Sea Front, SouthseaCraneswater and Eastern Parade, SouthseaHighland TerraceGuildhall and Victoria ParkEast SouthseaPortseaOld WymeringCampbell Road, SouthseaEastney BarracksSt David's Road, SouthseaOwen's Southsea
What we could not get (10)
- Planning data no portsmouth applications. Planning Data (planning.data.gov.uk) holds no Portsmouth planning applications: the planning-application collection lists sources only for government-organisation:D1342, local-authority-eng:CMD, local-authority-eng:NGM, local-authority:ADU, local-authority:CMD, local-authority:DNC, local-authority:WOT, not Portsmouth (POR). The API itself returned HTTP 503 on every retry on 2026-11-09 and the national planning-application download file is not published (HTTP 403).
- Full register not scriptable. The council's full planning applications register (Idox Public Access), including its weekly lists, answered an ordinary scripted request with HTTP 403 and an Azure WAF browser challenge on 2026-11-09. No RSS or weekly-list download is offered on portsmouth.gov.uk or data.portsmouth.gov.uk, and the council publishes no planning-applications dataset on data.gov.uk. So the applications below are only the subsets the council publishes as open data (HMO change-of-use permissions recorded in the HMO register; works to trees in conservation areas, 2013-2024). They are not all planning applications and must not be read as ward totals.
- Record links unverified. Each application's url is a search-by-reference link into Public Access built from the published reference. Because the register challenges scripts, these links were not fetched or verified by this script; a reader's browser resolves them. Brownfield-register history links are the council's own published applicationDetails links.
- Hmo decision not published. In the HMO register's planning rows the column headed 'Planning decision' holds the application type code (it equals the reference suffix, e.g. FUL, in all 284 rows), not an outcome. The decision outcome is therefore omitted; only the decision date is given. These rows carry no ward, so wards are assigned from the UPRN's OS Open UPRN point.
- Tree registers end. The latest conservation-area trees register published is 2024 (calendar year). No 2025 or later register is on data.portsmouth.gov.uk, so recent counts are absent, not zero. The 2013 register uses the council's own COT2013_n numbering, so those rows have no register link.
- Tpo works register. Applications for works to trees protected by a Tree Preservation Order (TPO) are not published as a downloadable register; only conservation-area tree notices are.
- Article4 not on planning data. Planning Data has no Portsmouth Article 4 direction or direction-area records (0 rows for organisation entity 255 in both national files on 2026-11-09). The council's data.gov.uk entry 'Article 4-2 Direction (Conservation Areas)' has no downloadable resource (INSPIRE metadata dated 2015). Portsmouth's HMO Article 4 direction is described on the council's HMO planning page (https://www.portsmouth.gov.uk/services/development-and-planning/planning-policy/supplementary-planning-documents/planning-houses-in-multiple-occupation/) but is not published as data, so no Article 4 records are given.
- Tree rows unlocated. 114 conservation-area tree register rows have no usable postcode in the published address (or the postcode has no centroid), so they are not assigned to a ward; see 'unassigned'.
- Listed buildings coverage. Listed buildings are Historic England records selected by published point inside the ONS ward boundaries (clipped to the coastline). Offshore or harbour structures outside those boundaries (for example the Solent forts) are not counted.
- Tpo not on planning data. Planning Data has no Portsmouth tree preservation order or zone records. The council's data.gov.uk TPO dataset dates from 2016 and is not used here.
Planning applications published by Portsmouth City Council as downloadable open data: the planning records in the HMO register (HMO change-of-use applications, validated 2009-06-26 to 2026-07-16) and the conservation area tree-works registers (2013-2024). This is not the full planning register, which is not available to scripted requests. Counts are of these subsets only.