High-Street Use-Mix Evidence and Planning Case Builder

Weak or inconsistent evidence can delay policy, increase consultancy spend, produce vulnerable decisions and undermine public confidence in how uses are assessed.

Planning or regeneration leadership pays; GIS, licensing and public-health officers contribute evidence, and committees consume the governed report.

The policy announcement establishes a likely new evidence task, but final legislation and council duties remain uncertain. The product should begin as a configurable pilot, not assume a fixed statutory test.

Replay two recent concentration/use decisions with two councils, record data work and report revisions, then test a shared schema against final guidance.

A maintained policy schema, comparable national premises history and auditable local overrides could be defensible; generic mapping is not.

Help councils produce faster, more consistent and transparent evidence packs while preserving professional judgement and local policy discretion.

Proxy based — medium confidence.

£10,000-£30,000 per council per year plus £5,000-£20,000 initial data/schema setup. A two-council pilot should be £15,000-£35,000 total.

Evidence basis: Verna Mycelia pricing (Linked pricing/rate page; no exact comparable price was extracted for this review) is the closest verified adjacent anchor used here. Its buyer, duration and scope are not assumed to be identical; implementation is separated where the opportunity requires integration, assurance or managed delivery.

Ask one planning authority, developer or planning consultancy with a live case pipeline to fund a paid test of High-Street Use-Mix Evidence and Planning Case Builder lasting 8–12 weeks, using an opening price of £15,000-£35,000 and covering 20 live applications, sites, conditions or evidence packs from one planning workflow. Paid scope: A council workspace that inventories premises, calculates concentration and vacancy measures, records local impacts and generates policy/committee evidence packs. Charge by authority, professional team, development site or assessed case and compare the fee with planning-officer and consultant time, avoidable invalid submissions and repeated evidence assembly. Measure validation time, missing-document rate, rework, officer overrides, applicant resubmissions and decision lead time. Continue only if handling or rework falls by at least 25%, at least 90% of required evidence is correctly identified and no material planning issue is suppressed. Stop or reprice if experienced officers find material false assurance, the workflow does not beat current practice or the buyer will not renew.

Increase confidence when final rules create recurring cases and two councils pay; lower it if responsibilities remain discretionary or data costs dominate.