My dad tried that when he was designing an extension. Well he wasn't trying to use OpenStreetMap. This was more than 10 years ago. He tried saying that he would produce the map himself, conducting a detailed and precise survey of the area. He's an architect, and knows how to do such a survey, so he made these various arguments quite vigorously to Kirklees Council planning department.
But the answer was "no". Not allowed. It has to be Ordnance Survey.
You have to show your plans on two copies of Ordnance Survey MasterMap for the area, which they will happily license to you (for about £70 if I remember correctly) It's presented as the purchase of maps from Ordnance Survey, but of course the planning department themselves will cream off a hefty administration fee on all these transactions.
Council planning departments get a sweet revenue stream out of this. And the closed data merry-go-round of UK planning applications, is complete when you consider that they are then required to submit updates (detailed building outlines) back to Ordnance Survey.
When debating whether OS data should be free and open, the question always comes up "who will pay for all the surveying work they do?", but the truth is they don't really *do* much of their own surveying. They just sit there and receive updates from all the local councils. Managing the movement of money and licensing and sending threatening letters keeps a lot of people in work I'm sure, but none of this would be necessary if the data was free and open, and it wouldn't be necessary to pay for maps when submitting a planning application. </rant>
