Development appraisal and financial viability

The numbers behind the planning case, written by the person making it

A financial viability assessment is a surveyor's document submitted into a planner's process. In most firms those are two different departments, or two different companies, and the appraisal and the planning statement end up making slightly different arguments. Councils notice. Reporters notice. It costs developers money.

Glen Etive Projects is led by Paul Hughes MRICS MRTPI, a chartered surveyor and a chartered town planner. We prepare both halves, and they agree with each other.

Development appraisal

Before you commit to a site, you need to know what it is worth and at what point it stops working. We prepare a full residual appraisal: land value, build cost, professional fees, finance, sales values, void periods and programme, with the assumptions stated and sourced rather than buried.

Used for acquisition decisions, funding applications, option and promotion agreement negotiations, and internal board approval. We also run sensitivity analysis on the variables that actually move the answer, so you can see how much room there is before the scheme fails.

Financial viability assessment for planning

Where a scheme cannot carry the affordable housing contribution or the infrastructure the council is asking for, that case has to be evidenced rather than asserted. A bare statement that the numbers do not work will not survive the council's own consultant.

We prepare the assessment, set out the assumptions in the form a reviewing surveyor expects to see them, anticipate where the council will push back, and then defend the position through the negotiation.

In Scotland this is the route to modifying or reducing a Section 75 obligation. In England it is the Section 106 and CIL equivalent, assessed against the National Planning Policy Framework and the planning practice guidance on viability.

Reviewing someone else's numbers

We also act the other way round. If a council has commissioned an assessment that does not reflect your scheme, or you have been offered terms that look wrong, we review the appraisal and identify where the inputs are unrealistic. Benchmark land value, build cost inflation and sales rates are where most disputes are won.

Existing agreements that no longer fit

Obligations agreed years ago often no longer reflect what a site can carry. Costs have moved, values have moved, and the scheme itself may have changed. Both planning systems allow an existing agreement to be modified, and the application to do so stands or falls on the evidence behind it.

What you get

A written appraisal with every input stated and referenced. Sensitivity analysis on the variables that matter. A planning statement that uses the same numbers and reaches the same conclusion. And someone who will sit in the meeting and argue it.

Where we work

Across Scotland, and in England at Wigan, Durham and Brentwood. We work in both planning systems and use the right framework for each.

Talk to us

Call Paul Hughes on 0785 256 8874 or email paul@glenetiveprojects.co.uk.