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Introduction

Urbanist Architecture is a leading multidisciplinary practice of architects and town planners, specialising in securing planning permissions for challenging sites across the UK. The practice partnered with Searchland to enhance their assessment capabilities and strengthen their application success rate.

Challenges

Challenges Before Searchland

Before using Searchland, the team faced significant challenges in their workflow. Analysing site potential required combing through multiple planning documents, which was both time-consuming and resource-intensive. Overlaying various planning constraints and policy requirements added further complexity, making it difficult to quickly identify viable opportunities.

Additionally, comprehensive planning policy analysis was essential for their applications, but the lack of an efficient, unified tool made this process slower and more challenging than it needed to be. These inefficiencies often delayed critical decision-making and added unnecessary strain to their operations.

Solutions

Solutions with Searchland

Searchland has streamlined Urbanist Architecture’s critical first phase of site assessments, enabling the team to overlay essential datasets like green belt boundaries, grey belt opportunities, and site allocations. The platform consolidates key data, including five-year land supply positions, local plan statuses, and housing delivery test results, into a comprehensive view.

This has cut research time from weeks to days, allowing architects and planners to move more efficiently into planning and design strategies. The interactive local plan policy tool has transformed application preparation, offering quick access to overlaid datasets and significantly enhancing submission efficiency.

Searchland’s clear presentation of complex planning constraints has strengthened Urbanist Architecture’s ability to address objections proactively. With a 62% reduction in research time, the team now delivers robust planning justifications backed by detailed analysis, improving both their efficiency and the quality of their outcomes.

Results

Results with Searchland

Searchland has empowered the team to address the growing demand for green belt development inquiries effectively. This shift from primarily advising green belt landowners to working with property developers and entrepreneurs reflects both the firm’s proven expertise in building successful cases for green belt developments and the government’s commitment to constructing 1.5 million homes over the next five years.

With Searchland, operational efficiency has significantly improved. Research tasks that once took weeks are now completed in days, enabling the team to handle multiple complex green belt projects simultaneously. This has allowed them to maintain their bespoke, thorough approach while scaling to meet increasing demand.

The platform’s capabilities have strengthened the firm’s ability to navigate the challenges of securing green belt planning permissions, positioning them as leaders in supporting innovative solutions to the UK’s housing shortage.

Searchland's interactive features enable us to overlay crucial datasets including green belt boundaries, grey belt opportunities, and site allocations.

The platform consolidates essential data including 5YHLS positions, local plan, and HDT results. This has reduced the time we spend researching the development of potential sites from weeks to days.

Urbanist Architecture empowers its data-driven approach with Searchland
Managing Director at Urbanist Architecture.

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