Three years on from the start of our work with Birmingham City Council, we took the opportunity to sit down with Maria Dunn (Head of Development Policy) and Stewart Donohue (Principal Planning Officer) and discuss their experience using PlaceMaker over the years.

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This powerful geospatial analysis tool has significantly influenced their approach to planning, helping them scale up site identification and adopt a more proactive stance in local plan-making. Let's find out how Birmingham has leveraged the power of technology to ensure no development opportunity goes unnoticed.

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Birmingham City Council (BCC) began its journey with PlaceMaker in 2021. As the second council in the country to use PlaceMaker at the time, Birmingham played a crucial role in refining the software to meet the specific needs of local planning authorities. Today, PlaceMaker is used by over 25 councils across England.

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Addressing Birmingham’s Housing Challenge

The catalyst for adopting PlaceMaker was a significant increase (35%) in Birmingham’s housing targets, which required a more proactive approach to identifying development sites as the council began work on a new Local Development Plan. Maria Dunn explains, “We had this colossal housing need and we wanted to be confident going into an examination that we’d explored everything and had a ‘no stone unturned’ approach to the identification of sites.”. With policy changes necessitating a threefold increase in the city’s annual dwelling construction, Birmingham needed robust and thorough a tool to search for suitable sites.

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Scaling Up with AI

Birmingham acquired PlaceMaker in 2021, with MHCLG Digital Pathfinder funding, to assist with site identification and assessment. The AI-driven tool allowed BCC to evaluate every land parcel across the city, significantly increasing the likelihood of finding suitable sites to meet the housing demand. Previously, the manual process of assessing 1,160 sites had taken 11 months. With PlaceMaker, 330,000 sites were assessed in just three months—an impressive 284-fold increase in efficiency.

PlaceMaker's enabled the council to appraise every land parcel across the city against key housing development criteria. The software also facilitates scenario testing, allowing the council to quickly assess the impact of potential policy decisions as they prepared for the new Birmingham Development Plan.

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A Proactive Approach to Planning

Stewart Donohue noted that the plan-making process has evolved significantly since the previous Birmingham Development Plan. There is now a greater emphasis in national policy to be proactive in identifying development sites. PlaceMaker has empowered Birmingham to identify and assess sites, rather than relying on landowners to come forward through traditional methods like the call for sites or planning applications. This shift was particularly beneficial given the historically low response rate to calls for sites.

While PlaceMaker speeds up the initial site identification stage, it doesn’t replace the need for local knowledge and planning expertise. Instead, it allows planners to spend more time evaluating the suitability of identified sites within the local context, using their professional judgement.

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User-Friendly and Efficient

One of the key benefits of PlaceMaker is its user-friendly interface, which made it easy for BCC officers to review the identified sites. From the 330,000 sites assessed, 6,500 were identified as potentially suitable for development according to Birmingham’s criteria. The tool’s features, such as the split-screen view of GIS data and Google Street View, were particularly appreciated by officers for their speed and ease of use. Officers could collaborate seamlessly using tracked changes and adding notes, photos and further information to each site's details page.

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Enhancing the Call for Sites Process

Initially adopted for site identification, PlaceMaker also became integral to Birmingham’s Call for Sites process. The software enabled the council to create an interactive form for site submissions, allowing the public to draw sites directly onto a map. This feature saved officers considerable time by eliminating the need to manually input data from emails or hard copies. Feedback from agents indicated that they found the form straightforward and appreciated the ability to input information directly. BCC saw an increase in call for sites submissions when using PlaceMaker.

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PlaceMaker’s consistent data handling allowed the council to apply uniform criteria to all site submissions, ensuring a robust and reliable database of potential development sites. This database was then used to engage with other services across the council and integrate additional data, such as green belt constraints, Flood Risk Assessments and Open Space Assessments, to rigorously assess site suitability.

As we spoke with Birmingham, their Regulation 18 Preferred Options consultation was underway for the city's new Local Plan.

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Continuous Improvement

PlaceMaker continues to evolve, offering planners the tools they need to navigate an ever-changing planning system. From site assessment and call for sites to managing public consultations and responding to representations, PlaceMaker provides councils with a comprehensive digital solution for the whole local plan process.

At Urban Intelligence, we are committed to building technology that helps planners understand their communities and build sustainable places. If you’re interested in seeing PlaceMaker in action and exploring how it can support your local plan-making, get in touch and book a demo today.

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