You may have seen the recent announcements from UK Government relating to “sweeping reforms” of the planning system. To summarise the changes – they propose the introduction of new planning rules from September 2020 to allow land to be designated into three categories depending on how the land and buildings are to be used: for growth; for renewal; and for protection. “Permission in principle” will be given to developments on land designated “for renewal” to speed-up building,
Our Chief Economist Tom Hall reviewed the likely impact of these changes in his blog this week; if you haven’t already seen it you can it read here: LinkedIn – September changes to the Planning system
I’m delighted to let you know that Barbour ABI’s market-leading services are unaffected by these new changes and we will continue to keep you up to date with all new planning developments and construction projects.
How buildings are classified and what happens when the use of a building is changing
Different uses of buildings and other land are grouped together into use classes. A change of use class is sometimes not considered to be development and therefore does not require planning permission. However, local authorities who are responsible for granting planning permission are still notified of changes to the use of a building. Barbour ABI are able to collect this data from various notices that are published in a similar way to planning applications, for example: certificates of lawfulness; prior approval notices; screening requests; applications for permission in principle; permitted development enquiries; pre-application notices or scoping notices. Rest assured we collect 100% of all planning applications, decisions and other notices and will continue to be able to do so.
How we collect planning data
As the UK’s largest construction intelligence service, Barbour ABI uses state of the art technology – including web crawling, machine learning and satellite imagery – to capture details on the biggest number of future and current construction projects in the UK. But we also know that technology can only get you so far. That’s why we employ the largest UK construction research team to contact the industry, making more than 1 million telephone calls per annum to build a comprehensive picture of UK development and track projects from their inception until they are completed.
We seek out and research tens of thousands of developments from non-planning sources, all of which provide opportunities for our customers. For instance we:
- Automate monitoring of national, local and trade media
- Build relationships with industry and government bodies such as the BRE and the Infrastructure and Projects Authority
- Stay close to public tender services such as OJEU and local authority frameworks thanks to our in house tender research service, the largest in the industry
- Track social media using the latest Martech
- Proactively research client and developer future plans
It’s all of this that makes our service unique, and why we have been the market-leader for the past 10 years.
If you have any questions please get in touch with your dedicated client manger.
