I built the evidence base I wished existed.
Everyone reads the plan. Almost nobody reads the decisions.
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 studies how housing policy works in practice. It builds evidence from the decisions the planning system already makes, publishes research from it, and works with organisations testing questions the record can answer. Everything published is free to read.
