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Using search effectively

Procedure Clerk

The search form

The search form provides filters to narrow results:

Filter What it does
Date From / Date To Limit to items from a specific date range
Limit to Committee(s) Tick one or more committees to limit results
Limit to Cycle Limit to a specific council cycle
Search In All Fields, Title, Agenda text, or Minutes text
Scope of Search Omit Boilerplate (default) or All Fields
Results Format Concise, Expanded, or Full
Sort By Date By relevance, Date Ascending, or Date Descending
Include non-active agendas Includes older non-live agenda versions
Include unpublished agendas Includes agendas not yet published

Search syntax guide

Click the Search tips & syntax guide link below the search box for a full reference on search operators. The guide covers:

  • Exact phrase matching with quotation marks
  • Excluding terms with NOT
  • OR searches
  • Wildcard matching with *
  • Fuzzy / typo-tolerant matching with ~

Key things to know

NOT requires a positive term. NOT housing on its own will return an error — you must include at least one positive search term, e.g. planning NOT housing.

Wildcards only work at the end of a word. plan* matches planning, plans, planned. *plan is not supported.

Search is not case-sensitive. Planning and planning return the same results.

Tips for effective searching

Start broad, then filter. Enter a simple search term first, then use the committee or date filters to narrow down.

Use quotation marks for references. Planning application references, minute numbers, and project names are best searched as exact phrases — for example "2023-137" rather than 2023 137.

Use the Cycle filter to focus on the current council term and avoid returning historical records.

Tags are searchable. If planning applications are tagged with their reference numbers, searching for the reference will find tagged items even if the reference does not appear in the item text itself.

If you get no results, try widening the date range, removing a committee filter, or replacing an exact word with a wildcard.

Last updated: 17 June 2026

See also

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