What actually gets approved in London’s small-site planning
The independent evidence base for small-site planning outcomes in London: what gets approved, and what a site is therefore worth. 15,533 applications across 33 London boroughs, 12,458 decided, every refusal reason classified and evidence-graded. The same answer whoever is asking, developer or seller, agent or authority, in place of the comparable-led guess that usually stands in for it.
GLA Small Sites Release Fund. Submissions close 10 July.
Comparable-evidence data for site investigations, due diligence, and feasibility. £250,000 available per applicant. The fund pays for evidence, not application drafting.
The problem
The current acquisition model is buy first, learn second. You commit £15,000 to £25,000 on drawings, consultants and a planning submission, then wait eight weeks at best. In Hammersmith & Fulham the median runs to twenty-two. The whole exercise is a punt on a question the borough already has a settled view on.
43% of London small-site applications are refused. Half miss the eight-week statutory deadline. In Havering, Croydon and Waltham Forest the refusal rate runs closer to seven in ten. Most of that outcome is, in principle, knowable in advance.
Of the schemes that do get through, 1 in 4 loses units during determination. The typical cut is 2 units. At a six-figure residual per unit, that’s the margin of the whole acquisition.
Published policy tells you what a borough wants.
The data tells you what it approves.
Four patterns in the data
We publish how well we predict. Misses included.
A retrospective hold-out, plus a tamper-evident ledger of calls committed before the council decides. The same evidence standard, turned on our own predictions.
Four ways to use this
See the depth before you commit.
All sections present. Anonymised real project. Credit applied to a full Site Assessment within 30 days.
Buy a sample →Should I buy this site?
Risk rating. Capacity. Viability. Refusal flags. Comparables. Process intel.
See what you get →What does this borough actually approve?
Single borough £1,500. Three-Borough Bundle £3,500. Delivered within 5 to 7 working days.
Commission a Borough Report →What’s happening in this borough?
All 33 boroughs. Interactive area maps. Quarterly refresh.
Open the dashboards →How it’s made
Every application coded
Three years of small-site decisions per borough. Each one coded by site type, area, PTAL, density, conservation status, and outcome.
Every document read
Officer reports and decision notices parsed for refusal reasons, conditions, case officers, and design commentary. Over 30,000 documents processed.
Every finding graded
Four evidence tiers based on sample size and statistical significance. Small samples are flagged openly, and every claim is qualified.
About
I built the tool I wished existed.
I’ve sat on every side of this table. Designing schemes as an architect. Assessing them at a London council. Acquiring sites and managing planning as a developer. Fourteen years of watching the gap between what policy says and what officers actually approve.
The planning system publishes the data. Nobody was synthesising it. So I built Perfect Scale: every application coded, every document read, every finding graded.
Better data → better schemes → more homes.
Abre Etteh, ARB Registered Architect
The data exists. Use it.
15,533 applications across 33 London boroughs, 12,458 decided. Every finding evidence-graded. The same evidence, whoever is asking.