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Re:Scraping 241 UK council planning portals – 2.6M decisions... by mebkorea on Tuesday April 28, 2026 @06:03AM (#47932414)
Yeah, unfortunately you are not wrong about the national tradition of wanting to pull down clever-clogs...

The open source angle is something I'm increasingly considering, especially after a local government IT person made a fair point on this thread about the strain it causes. It won't fix the scraping load directly, but might frame the project as public-interest rather than attempting to make a bit of extra money. Tbh, the real value is probably in serving property developers and consultants, not emailing £19 PDFs to homeowners. Got a lot to think about.

Re:Scraping 241 UK council planning portals – 2.6M decisions... by jaggs on Tuesday April 28, 2026 @06:18AM (#47932500)
I think you're absolutely on the right track. It's all a matter of optics. Open source gives you the higher ground for the jobsworths. Meanwhile you can put together some kind of cool package to approach property developers with.