Opportunity
Land Availability and Site Allocation Assessment Workspace
Plan-makers must identify a sufficient range of sites and assess availability, suitability, achievability, viability, capacity and delivery timing, often through disconnected GIS layers, call-for-sites submissions and consultant spreadsheets.
Decision snapshot
- Primary user
- Local-plan site assessment teams, land promoters and planning consultancies.
- Likely buyer
- The buyer is a local-plan policy/GIS lead or consultancy managing the site-assessment process. Land promoters are a secondary market for pre-submission self-assessment, but public and private versions must keep decision-making roles clearly separated.
- Why now
- Every plan allocating sites must perform this workflow and defend it at examination. Land promoters have high economic stakes in how evidence is interpreted.
- Initial wedge
- A site assessment register combining call-for-sites submissions, constraints, infrastructure, viability and officer judgements into a transparent decision trail.
- Key uncertainty
- Raise above 86 if authorities confirm fragmented GIS/spreadsheet workflows and repeated reassessment. Reduce below 68 if a current planning GIS already manages criteria, evidence, review and examination outputs end-to-end.
The problem
Plan-makers must identify a sufficient range of sites and assess availability, suitability, achievability, viability, capacity and delivery timing, often through disconnected GIS layers, call-for-sites submissions and consultant spreadsheets. The NPPF requires availability, suitability, achievability, likely viability, capacity and delivery timing to be considered together, but each judgement is supported by different evidence and often revisited as infrastructure or policy changes. The main risk is not mapping constraints; it is maintaining a transparent assessment trail.
Operational consequences
- Call-for-sites submissions can arrive in inconsistent formats and require repeated clarification. - Constraint layers can change after the initial assessment, forcing officers to re-check large site inventories. - Officer judgement can be difficult to compare across sites when reasons are buried in narrative spreadsheets. - At examination, authorities need to explain why reasonable alternatives were rejected and why selected sites remain deliverable.
Who is underserved
Local-plan site assessment teams, land promoters and planning consultancies.
Buyer and user context
The buyer is a local-plan policy/GIS lead or consultancy managing the site-assessment process. Land promoters are a secondary market for pre-submission self-assessment, but public and private versions must keep decision-making roles clearly separated.
Evidence
PM9 requires thorough site identification plus availability, suitability, achievability, viability, capacity and timescale assessment. PAS land-supply guidance highlights forecasting build-out and trajectories; guidance also encourages constraint filtering. PAS continues to describe site assessment through suitability, availability and achievability, while public-health/planning guidance notes that Strategic Housing Land Availability Assessment remains a core mechanism for deciding where growth can occur. The new NPPF also intensifies the importance of infrastructure capacity and delivery timing.
Evidence interpretation
GIS and call-for-sites intake are mature functions. The opportunity is a structured evidence-and-judgement workflow that makes site decisions repeatable, updateable and examination-ready.
Demand
Every plan allocating sites must perform this workflow and defend it at examination. Land promoters have high economic stakes in how evidence is interpreted. Every authority allocating sites must perform this exercise and land promoters have strong commercial incentives to understand the same criteria. A single methodology can also be reused across strategic and local plan stages.
Validation approach
Load one authority's previous site assessment and re-run 100 sites using the product. Compare officer time, consistency of reasons, speed of updating when one constraint layer changes and the quality of the final audit trail.
Competition
Planning GIS, consultation portals and consultancy models cover parts of the workflow. Opportunity is strongest as an evidence/audit layer rather than another map. Planning GIS vendors, consultation platforms, LandTech and consultants already provide constraints and site intelligence. A map with red/amber/green layers is not sufficient differentiation.
Potential defensibility
Store the evidence, judgement, reviewer, date and policy basis behind every assessment criterion and re-run only affected criteria when data changes. Examination-ready decision lineage and reusable local methodologies create more value than raw data access.
The opportunity
A site assessment register combining call-for-sites submissions, constraints, infrastructure, viability and officer judgements into a transparent decision trail. Combine submission intake, spatial evidence and human assessment in one site record. The product should show exactly which evidence changed when a site's conclusion changes.
Intended outcome
Shorten assessment cycles, improve consistency across officers and make site-selection decisions easier to defend and refresh.
Commercial model
Pricing classification
Proxy based — medium confidence.
Indicative pricing
£15,000–£45,000 per plan/year; implementation £10,000–£30,000; promoter due-diligence version £250–£1,000/site. A per-plan licence of £15,000-£40,000 with implementation is plausible. A separate promoter screening product should be priced per site or portfolio and must not imply council endorsement.
Evidence basis: Agile AI Planning Validator (£15,000–£60,000 per licence) 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.
Commercial test
Ask one planning authority, developer or planning consultancy with a live case pipeline to fund a paid test of Land Availability and Site Allocation Assessment Workspace lasting 8–12 weeks, using an opening price of £10,000–£30,000 and covering 20 live applications, sites, conditions or evidence packs from one planning workflow. Paid scope: A site assessment register combining call-for-sites submissions, constraints, infrastructure, viability and officer judgements into a transparent decision trail. 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.
Monetisation models and pricing estimates are research-informed and indicative only. Where direct pricing evidence is unavailable, estimates may use comparable products, procurement data, adjacent market benchmarks and stated assumptions. They are not financial advice, forecasts or guarantees of commercial viability. Independent market, legal and financial validation is recommended before acting.
Score rationale
Underserved score 80/100
Mandatory repeated workflow, valuable audit trail and clear geospatial structure. Stronger if positioned as transparent assessment governance rather than automated allocation. The task is mandatory and structured, but much of the underlying GIS capability already exists. Auditability and change management are the strongest product wedges.
What would change the score
Raise above 86 if authorities confirm fragmented GIS/spreadsheet workflows and repeated reassessment. Reduce below 68 if a current planning GIS already manages criteria, evidence, review and examination outputs end-to-end.
The score is evidence-informed editorial judgement based on manually reviewed sources. It is not a forecast or guarantee. How we score →
Evidence sources6
- PAS – Land Supply
local.gov.uk
- PAS – Local Plan Route Mapper
local.gov.uk
- PAS – Local Plan Evidence Base
local.gov.uk
- PAS – Site assessment evidence guidance
local.gov.uk
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