Discover how councils are using PlaceMaker to:

• Identify sites for Land Availability Assessments
• Fully digitalise the Call for Sites process
• Cut site assessment time down by 86%
• Engage more residents with better data visualisation and interactive reports

‍

Planners play a critical role in shaping sustainable growth — identifying land for new homes and jobs, responding to local needs, and ensuring development aligns with long-term strategy. A key part of this is the Housing and Economic Land Availability Assessment (HELAA), informing local plan development. With recent reforms placing more weight on the five-year housing land supply, HELAA’s role as an evidence base is more important than ever.

While HELAA has traditionally been a complex, manual and resource-intensive assessment process, digital tools like PlaceMaker are helping local authorities streamline their approach, supporting planners as they navigate mandatory targets, shortened timeframes and new policies. By enabling faster and more consistent site assessments, PlaceMaker allows planning teams to focus on making confident, evidence-led decisions for their Local Plan evidence base - demonstrating sites' suitability, availability and achievability.

Smarter site identification and assessment

With PlaceMaker, planners can:

• Identify and assess large volumes of sites quickly
• Use customisable, policy-aligned search filters and constraints
• Prioritise sites with automated suitability scoring
• Conduct further analysis with built-in assessment tools for accessibility and custom analysis.

Suitability scoring incorporates national and local data layers, and constraints such as site size thresholds, policy layer overlaps and proximity to key infrastructure. With in-depth analysis available within the platform, planners can carry out extensive desktop assessments to prioritise the sites that justify an in-person site visit, saving time and supporting data-driven planning.

As well as proactive site identification (using custom site or land ownership information), PlaceMaker enables teams to carry out a digital Call for Sites with user-friendly forms and automated initial suitability assessment — helping ensure no suitable opportunities are missed and providing evidence to demonstrate site availability.

At North East Derbyshire District Council, using PlaceMaker for a digital Call for Sites reduced site assessment time by 86% — from 3.5 hours to just 30 minutes per site. The team streamlined submissions and assessment, eliminating manual handling of emails and paper forms.

Consistent and transparent methodologies

PlaceMaker helps planners standardise site assessments with automation and consistent methodologies across all sites. Each site's details page brings together key site data for officers' review, adjustments and specialist comments. This ensures that every site is consistently assessed, with a clear audit trail for comments and changes.

Planners at Newcastle Council co-designed enhanced capacity analysis for sites to develop a robust, data-driven land availability assessment. With post-code level granularity, planners can:

• View prevailing densities across neighbourhoods
• Rapidly test densification strategies
• Better understand policy impacts on residential capacity and site achievability

Collaborative planning

PlaceMaker brings together colleagues from planning policy, highways, ecology and more into a shared, unlimited-user platform. This improves coordination, data sharing and feedback throughout the HELAA process and beyond — streamlining the path from site assessment to spatial strategy. From inputting specialist comments for LAA to reviewing specific site details for Urban Design - colleagues across planning can access site data in a centralised hub.

Engaging citizens with data visualisation

LAA reports are often data-heavy and hard to navigate. PlaceMaker’s integrated Document Builder makes it easy to visualise site data, maps and policy layers in interactive, accessible formats - all within an easy to use drag-and-drop builder. Planners can embed consultation questions directly into reports, helping residents engage with the local plan process, creating a more user-friendly experience for public engagement.

Planning officers at Milton Keynes City Council used the Document Builder to publish their full LAA report and Regulation 18 Consultation - creating an interactive, engaging experience for residents.

Meeting national expectations with confidence

In a shifting policy landscape, PlaceMaker gives planners clarity, capability and confidence. With purpose built local plan tools, made by planner for planners, we're helping councils deliver faster assessments and better public engagement to shape future development.

Ready to see how PlaceMaker can help your council meet housing targets and transform your local plan-making process? Book a free demo today to see the platform in action and discover how it can streamline site assessments, enhance public engagement, and support data-driven decision making for your council. Don’t just take our word for it—head to our Articles page to read the latest case studies and see how PlaceMaker councils are delivering for their communities.