Every local authority runs its own committees, on its own schedule, publishing decisions in its own format. Finding out what a specific committee decided at a specific meeting usually means, crawling through a council website, working out which committee it would have gone to, guessing at a date, then - if the meeting was recorded - sitting through hours of footage to catch the two minutes that matter.
Searchland now brings planning committee data into one place: Committee Explorer.
What is Searchland’s Committee Explorer?
Committee Explorer is a new tool inside Searchland for searching planning committee meetings, decisions and councillor voting histories across local councils in England, Scotland and Wales, spanning meetings from 2020 to present. Search by authority, committee type, councillor, decision outcome, planning application or meeting date - whatever you already know, Committee Explorer finds the rest - the first time this has been possible on any platform.
How it works
Search by authority, committee, application or date
Know the application reference? Search by that, and Committee Explorer surfaces the meeting and the exact moment it was discussed. Know the authority but not the date? Select the authority and committee for a full breakdown of every meeting, instantly.
Jump straight to the moment in a recording
Every recording comes with meeting notes or a full transcription, with timestamp-linked navigation. Instead of watching a five-hour recording end to end, search the transcript and jump straight to the point a specific issue comes up.
Every recording is archived permanently
Council uploads expire, get taken down, or simply vanish from local authority websites. Searchland keeps every committee video permanently, so the footage is still there long after the original upload is gone.
Watch meetings live or catch up later
Meetings can be streamed live as they happen, or caught up on afterwards - log in and the current week's meetings are filtered by default.
Councillor voting records and political composition
Committee Explorer tracks individual councillor voting records, statements and historical positions, alongside a committee’s political composition and the topics and objections that come up most often, so you can build a picture of how a committee, or a named councillor, tends to decide, before you rely on it.
Get alerted when your application goes to committee
Set an alert on an application and get notified the moment it's scheduled for committee, and again when a decision is made - so you're not checking back manually to find out.
Export data, with AI querying coming soon
All tabs, covering authorities, committees, meetings, and applications, support CSV exports. You will also soon be able to query the underlying data directly using your preferred AI model (such as Claude, ChatGPT, or Copilot) via MCP. This makes it effortless to analyse councillor records, evaluate political voting patterns, or quickly check a meeting's final outcome.
Why it matters
For planners, particularly those earlier in their career who tend to inherit this kind of research, Committee Explorer removes hours of manual work per application. What used to mean identifying the right committee, tracking down a meeting date, and sitting through a multi-hour recording now takes one search.
For developers, it's a due-diligence tool. Before submitting an application, check how a committee or its councillors have voted on comparable cases, see approval patterns by authority, and pull a site's full planning history into one view - understanding how a committee is likely to view your scheme before it goes to a committee - rather than finding out after submission that a committee has a track record of refusing schemes like yours.
Searchland is the only platform that brings planning committee data, meetings, decisions and councillor voting records, from every UK authority into one place.
"Searchland has yet again built and delivered an industry leading tool." - Paul Harwood, Director at Avison Young
Try it
Committee Explorer is available on all Professional licenses.
Book a demo to see how much time it can save on your next planning search.
