I built the evidence base I wished existed.
Everyone reads the plan. Almost nobody reads the decisions.
Perfect Scale Ltd ceased trading on 16 September 2026. This website is kept up for reference only.
I have sat on four sides of the same table. I designed schemes as an architect. I assessed them at a London council. I acquired sites and ran planning as a developer. Now I read the decisions back as a researcher.
Each move changed what I could see. As an architect I knew what we proposed. At the council I saw why proposals actually failed, which was rarely the reason the applicant assumed. As a developer I watched money committed on what a policy document seemed to imply. In all four the same information was missing: what the decisions themselves showed.
Why small sites
The first dataset covers residential applications for one to nine homes. They are numerous, widely distributed, and largely determined through the ordinary planning process rather than negotiated scheme by scheme, which makes them a useful place to watch policy meet practice. There are 14,600 of them across the 33 London planning authorities, 11,694 decided.
They are not the whole housing system. They are a place to start.
Perfect Scale today
Perfect Scale Ltd ceased trading on 16 September 2026. It no longer accepts commissions, collaborations, or other work. This website is kept up for reference only.
What remains is the record already published: the dataset, the research and the method. Everything on this site is free to read.
