Open Council Network for Businesses

OCN helps planning consultants, property developers, law firms, and professional services stay ahead of local government decisions that impact their work. We address two major challenges: research efficiency and early insight discovery.

With OCN, you’ll spend less time searching for information and more time delivering value to your clients—spotting opportunities early, making better-informed decisions, and strengthening your position as a trusted advisor on local government activity.

Professional Features

Advanced Search Capabilities

Our professional-grade search engine gives you unprecedented access to local government information across the entire UK.

Ideal for:

Research Efficiency

Traditional local government research is time-consuming and fragmented, requiring manual searches across council websites, sifting through lengthy documents, and tracking down relevant information across multiple meetings and hours of video.

This inefficiency costs valuable billable hours and prevents you from providing the most current and comprehensive advice to your clients.

With OCN, you no longer need to watch hours of meeting videos or pay for expensive transcription services—our platform provides summaries of documents and transcripts (where available) for rapid, cost-effective research.

How?

1. Get videos and transcripts (where available), AI-generated summaries and supporting documents for every meeting in one centralized platform.
2. Access recent and historical meetings and decisions for all councils in one place, in one format.
3. Receive weekly professional briefings covering all meetings and decisions for up to 5 councils.
4. Use advanced search to find specific information across nearly 1 million documents from every council in the UK.
5. Ask questions directly about any meeting and get instant answers with clickable links to source material—no more watching hours of video or reading lengthy documents to find what you need.

Instant Answers with Verifiable Sources

When clients ask specific questions about council decisions, you need answers fast—not hours of research. Traditional methods require watching entire meeting videos, reading through lengthy documents, or manually searching transcripts to find the exact information you need.

This delay costs billable hours and prevents you from providing the responsive, authoritative advice your clients expect.

How?

1. Ask natural language questions about any meeting—like "What conditions were attached to the planning approval?" or "What concerns did councillors raise about the development?"
2. Receive immediate answers with direct quotes from transcripts, documents, or summaries.
3. Click any quote to jump directly to the source—whether it's a specific moment in a meeting video, a document, or a section of the summary.
4. Build client confidence with verifiable, source-backed information instead of spending hours searching for answers.

Early Insight Discovery

In professional services, early access to information about policy changes, development opportunities, and regulatory shifts can provide significant competitive advantages.

Traditional methods often mean learning about important developments weeks or months after decisions are made, limiting your ability to advise clients proactively.

This reactive approach reduces your value as a strategic advisor and can result in missed opportunities for your clients.

How?

1. Receive weekly summaries of all council meetings for your subscribed councils, highlighting decisions and discussions.
2. Access meeting transcripts to understand the full context and sentiment behind official decisions (where available).
3. Track committee discussions and decisions to anticipate future policy directions.