Agentic UK pre-application planning advice request letter, site appraisal summary, and local development plan policy compliance check service for small developers, self-builders, and architects (1–10 staff) preparing to submit a planning application to a local planning authority. Replaces the planning consultant who charges £800–£2,500 to write the pre-app inquiry letter, assess the relevant local plan policies, and produce a site-specific policy compliance summary — a process most small developers skip due to cost, leading to avoidable refusals.
Why now
No fresh signal provided today. Justified by the December 2024 NPPF revision (a documented major policy change requiring re-assessment of local plan compliance for almost every active site in England) and persistent pain in r/Construction and planning forums where small developers report planning consultant fees as a primary barrier to pre-application engagement.
Commercial value
Target: ~50,000 small planning applications submitted annually in England; self-builders, small developers, architects handling residential extensions and small commercial schemes. Willingness to pay: £300–£700 per pre-app pack (vs £800–£2,500 consultant). Budget line: 'planning consultancy / pre-application advice.' ACV ~£450 transactional. TAM at 5% of annual applications: ~£11M. Urgency: Labour government's planning reform push (NPPF December 2024 revision) has increased policy complexity.
Go-to-market
Target architects and self-builders via RIBA directory outreach and self-build forums (selfbuildportal.org.uk, r/DIYUK). Hook: 'Know your policy position before you pay a planning consultant £1,500.' Price: £399 per pre-app pack. First 10 customers via direct outreach to sole-trader architects (easily found on RIBA Find an Architect). Referral incentive: architects get £50 credit per client referred.
2-week MVP
Single output: a 4-page pre-application inquiry letter addressed to the relevant LPA, plus a 1-page policy compliance summary citing the relevant local plan policies. Customer inputs: postcode, site description, proposed use, development description. LLM retrieves the relevant LPA's published local plan policies (via web search or pre-scraped policy database for top 50 LPAs) and drafts the letter. Cut: no site visit, no viability assessment, no heritage or ecology screening. Day-1 outcome: customer has a professional pre-app letter they can submit to the LPA immediately, replacing a £1,200 planning consultant instruction.
Agent score
0.54 — Commercial: real budget line, £399 ACV, but transactional and lumpy — developers don't buy monthly — capped at 0.65. Speed: LPA policy retrieval adds complexity beyond a pure form-fill; top-50 LPA policy scraping takes ~1 week extra — 0.75 rather than 0.9. Defensibility: moderate; a proprietary LPA policy database updated post-NPPF revisions creates some moat, and architect referral network creates distribution lock — honest 0.42.
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