From Planning Application to Booked Job: What the Process Actually Looks Like

People ask me what actually happens between a planning application getting approved and a plumber winning the job off the back of it. It sounds like it should be one step - find the address, send a letter, get the work. It isn't, quite. There are a handful of stages, and the timing of them is the part that decides whether it works. So rather than talk about it in the abstract, here is the whole thing, start to finish, the way it actually plays out.

The single most important thing to understand before any of it is the window. When a homeowner gets planning permission for an extension, they are not about to start building next week. Building regs approval still has to happen, which takes another five to eight weeks. They have to serve notice on the neighbours, often a month or two before a wall goes up. Then the build itself. All in, it is usually a good few months between the approval landing and a spade going in the ground - and longer still before anyone needs a plumber for first fix. That gap is the whole opportunity.

Stage 1: The application gets approved and goes public

This is where it starts, and it happens whether anyone is watching or not. A homeowner's extension or loft conversion gets the nod from the council, and the decision is published on the council's public planning portal - address, description of the work, the lot. It is free for anyone to look at. Nobody needs permission to see it. The trouble is that "anyone can look" and "anyone does look" are two very different things, and almost no plumbers ever do. I have written about the how of that in finding plumbing jobs on council planning portals.

Stage 2: You spot the ones that mean plumbing

Not every approved application is worth your time. A new fence, a bit of signage, a tree being felled - none of that needs you. What you are looking for are the jobs that genuinely mean first-fix and second-fix work: rear and side extensions, loft conversions with a new en-suite, garage conversions, anything adding a bathroom or a kitchen. So the second stage is filtering - reading through the approvals and pulling out the ones that will actually need a plumber. Done by hand this is the slow, boring bit, and it is exactly why most people give up on the idea. Done properly it leaves you with a short list of real, relevant jobs in your area.

Stage 3: You write to them - and the timing beats the wording

Now you reach out, and for this a physical letter to the property is the right tool. Here is a genuinely contrarian bit, because half the marketing world will tell you direct mail is dead: for this specific job, it is the best tool there is, precisely because nobody uses it. A letter through the door about their exact approved project has no competition in the letterbox, whereas an email would be one of forty and probably spam-filtered anyway. The numbers back it up - direct mail is many times more effective than email at getting a response, and a letter that references the recipient's actual project pulls several times the response of a generic "Dear homeowner" mailshot.

But the thing people get wrong is obsessing over the wording. The wording matters a bit. The timing matters far more. A letter that lands a week after approval, when they are sitting there thinking "right, who do I need to line up for this", beats a beautifully written one that arrives after the builder has already sorted the trades. Reference the specific work, keep it short and human, and get it there early. I go deeper on the letter itself in how to write a letter to a homeowner who's just got planning permission.

Stage 4: The conversation happens on your terms

This is the stage that makes the whole thing worth it. When someone responds to that letter, the conversation is completely different from a normal plumbing enquiry. They are not in a panic with water coming through the ceiling. They are planning, calmly, months ahead. And crucially, you are not the fifth plumber they have spoken to - you are the first, and often the only one, because nobody else wrote to them. There is no race to answer the phone first, no being played off against three other quotes. You talk about the job properly, you quote fairly, and you are not fighting on price because there is nobody else in the room.

Stage 5: The job lands when the build is ready

The last thing to be realistic about is that this is not instant work. You have reached these people early on purpose, which means there is a wait between the conversation and the tools coming out - the build has to get going before first fix is needed. That is a feature, not a bug. It means that if you are doing this consistently, you are quietly filling your diary weeks and months ahead with good, sizeable jobs, while everyone else is living hand to mouth on whoever rings that day. A booked extension in three months' time is worth a lot more than another emergency call-out tomorrow.

Why hardly anyone does it

So that is the whole process: approval, filter, letter, conversation, job. None of the stages are hard. The reason almost no plumbers do it is that Stage 2 - the filtering - is a weekly slog, and the payoff is delayed rather than instant, so it is easy to start and easy to quit. That is the honest catch. It is also exactly the sort of thing that should be automated so you never have to think about the boring part.

That is what we are building with Planning Leads. It watches the council portals for you, does the filtering, and sends you a weekly digest of the approved, plumbing-relevant applications in your postcode area - each with a letter template ready to personalise and post. Scottish planning data first, then England and Wales. The manual version works; this just removes the one stage that makes people give up. If you want the fuller picture of why these leads convert so well, our post on planning application leads covers it.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long after planning approval should I contact the homeowner?

As soon as you reasonably can - ideally within a week or two of the decision being published. There is usually a few months between approval and the build starting, so getting in early means you reach them while they are still lining up who to use, before anyone else has thought to.

Isn't the work too far off to be worth it?

The gap is the point. You are booking sizeable jobs weeks or months ahead instead of chasing same-day call-outs. It fills your diary with planned, higher-value work. If you need instant jobs too, this simply runs alongside that rather than replacing it.

Why a letter and not an email or a phone call?

A physical letter to the property is far more effective here and it is not intrusive. Email about a service is easily ignored or spam-filtered, and you rarely have a good address for it anyway. Cold calling a homeowner is a different matter entirely and best avoided. A relevant, well-timed letter is the right balance of effective and polite.

What kind of response rate is realistic?

Response rates on well-targeted physical mail are modest in percentage terms, but the job values here are high, so even a handful of replies a year pays for itself many times over. A personalised letter referencing the actual approved work does considerably better than a generic mailshot.

Do I need special software to do this?

No - the council portals are free and you can do the whole thing by hand. The only reason to use a tool is to remove the weekly filtering slog, which is the stage most people give up on. That is exactly what the Planning Leads digest is built to do.

Here's the thing nobody in the plumbing trade is talking about yet: planning applications are public data. Every approved extension, loft conversion and new build in your area is sitting in a council portal, searchable by anyone who can be bothered to look. Most plumbers never look. The ones who do - and who reach those homeowners before they've Googled a plumber - win jobs they didn't have to compete for. We're automating that process. If you want early access, the waitlist is at plumberproai.co.uk/planning-leads

Written by Alexander McVicar