‍Permitted development rights are the Government’s way of expediting an often bloated and complex planning process, ensuring more homes can be built to tackle the UK’s well-document Housing Crisis. Our new tool embraces these measures and can use them to help you accelerate your next project in seconds.

At Searchland, we're always working to simplify and disrupt the site sourcing process, making it faster and less complex for developers. Our newest tool does exactly this, integrating a search function for permitted development (PD) sites into our platform.

We discussed PD rights in more detail in a previous blog post, but this new upgrade means that within seconds our users can identify sites that can be developed on without having to go through the entire planning application process. For example, our Class MA permitted development tool has already identified 27,599 brownfield sites that could be developed into residences with prior approval from the Local Planning Authority (LPA). This means lower risk and a great head-start to a project.

This tool is an exciting new weapon in the arsenal of Searchland users – while we had previously sought to save developers time by integrating prior approval rates into our search function (thereby identify sites with better planning potential), this tool has the power to bypass the planning application process entirely. It replaces the typical 8-13 week waiting time for planning applications with the 56-day rule, whereby if prior approval is granted within 56 days, the site is also automatically granted approval.

Allowing developers to benefit from PD rights

PD rights were introduced by the Government as a means of correcting the market, deliberately simplifying the planning process to help reach its target of having 300,000 new homes added to the national housing stock every year. This strategy for tackling the Housing Crisis has purportedly created 72,687 new homes in the five years to March 2020, which demonstrates how PD rights can expedite development projects by removing troublesome red tape.

The goal of our new PD tool is to increase the number of developers able to quickly and easily take advantage of PD sites. It works by cross-referencing a range of datasets (including use class, planning constraints and internal measurements) to identify sites that meet predefined criteria. And given PD rights are temporary, Searchland will help users navigate the constantly changing status of different plots and sites.

Integrating this tool into our existing datasets and search functionality is another step towards automating the site sourcing process – we are moving close to compiling all a developer’s options into one intuitive platform. Having all the most important, up-to-date information at hand removes potential obstacles and makes informed, strategic decision-making easier.

At Searchland, we are constantly working to update and improve our offering, adding new tools like our PD search capabilities that empower our users by doing the heavy lifting for them.

Why not take a free seven-day trial to experience the game-changing potential of Searchland for yourself?