Councils are being asked to defend more evidence, with fewer people to build it.
Four tools that turn planning, land and finance data your authority already holds into evidence it can stand behind — at committee, at examination, and on appeal. A fifth pulls the results straight into the statutory report you have to publish anyway.
The council published a supply position of 3.58 years. FiveYearHorizon, scoring the same 29 sites on the deliverability evidence that exists, returns 1.21 years, with a range of 1.05 to 1.39 years. Neither figure reaches the five-year requirement.
The data already exists. The modelling capacity doesn’t.
Every housing trajectory, every temporary accommodation budget line, and every developer’s Economic Impact Assessment now gets tested — by the Planning Inspectorate, by government intervention regimes, by opposition members, and increasingly by appellants’ own consultants looking for the weak point in a council’s evidence base.
ONS, MHCLG, StatsWales, the VOA and the council’s own planning and finance systems between them hold almost everything needed. What’s missing, in most authorities, isn’t data — it’s the time and the modelling capacity to turn it into something that survives scrutiny before the scrutiny arrives.
The Horizon suite was built to close that gap: four tools on one shared method, plus a fifth that assembles their output straight into the statutory report every authority has to publish anyway.
One evidence base. Four questions councils are asked most often.
Scores every site on how it’s likely to deliver, then reports the supply position as a probability range — built to survive cross-examination, not just to be published.
Built on: planning register · SHLAA · Housing Delivery Test · viability evidence 02 TASpendHorizon “What will temporary accommodation cost next year — and the year after?”Projects caseload and net cost from the council’s own data, and separates gross spend, subsidy recovered, and true net exposure — usually where the internal argument happens.
Built on: H-CLIC returns · homelessness statistics · revenue outturn data 03 EIAHorizon “Does the developer’s economic case hold up?”Rebuilds the applicant’s jobs, GVA and fiscal claims independently, and keeps economic impact visibly separate from fiscal impact — a distinction developer assessments routinely blur.
Built on: ONS & StatsWales input-output tables · VOA data · CIL/S106 schedules 04 CapacityHorizon “Can you defend your housing number — or make the case for boundary review?”Reconciles standard method need against what land supply can deliver — by source — so any residual gap needing Green Belt release is quantified, not asserted.
Built on: standard method calculator · SHLAA · Brownfield Land Register · OS MasterMap/VOA dataAssembles the statutory Monitoring Report automatically from data the other four tools already hold — no separate onboarding.
Included with the Full Suite Visit LocalPlanHorizonA five-year land supply position built to survive scrutiny — not just be published.
Every site in the trajectory, scored on how it will actually deliver.
Most published five-year housing land supply figures are a single number built from a flat list of sites, each assumed to deliver on the timetable the promoter gave. That’s the exact point a developer’s planning consultant tests at appeal — and, at more than 150 English authorities today, the point where the position doesn’t hold.
FiveYearHorizon scores each site against the deliverability evidence that actually exists: planning status, time since permission, viability flags, infrastructure dependency, and historic build-out rates for comparable sites. It then runs the whole trajectory through thousands of simulated outcomes, so the council’s position is reported as a range — with the sites driving the downside risk named individually — rather than a single figure asserted and hoped for.
What officers get
A site-by-site register scoring confidence high, medium or low, the plain-language risk behind each score, and each site’s contribution to the overall supply figure — the document handed to counsel ahead of an appeal or examination, not a summary written after the fact.
In practice
Validated against a recent Green Belt appeal decision in which an Inspector found no compelling evidence for the council’s claimed supply position — the case that also led to the authority losing the right to determine its own major applications. FiveYearHorizon is tested against exactly this kind of outcome before it’s trusted on live evidence.
Runs on data you already hold
- Planning register
- SHLAA
- Housing Delivery Test
- Local Plan viability evidence
- Infrastructure Delivery Plan
The supply position this tool returns for that district is the chart at the top of this page. Back to it.
See the cost of temporary accommodation before it lands in next year’s budget.
A forward projection, not another quarterly report on what already happened.
Temporary accommodation is now one of the fastest-growing pressures on council budgets in England, and most authorities manage it by watching the in-year overspend grow rather than projecting where it’s heading. TASpendHorizon converts the council’s own caseload and cost history into a forward trajectory — status quo, alongside faster housing delivery and increased prevention spend — so the consequence of each choice is visible before the budget is committed to it.
The model separates gross spend, subsidy recovered through Housing Benefit and the Temporary Accommodation Management Fee, and the council’s true net exposure — the reconciliation most often blurred in headline reporting, and most contested between housing and finance.
What officers get
A rolling multi-year net cost projection suitable for a Medium Term Financial Strategy or a financial risk register, a breakdown of which accommodation and household type is driving cost growth, and — where a housing delivery trajectory is available — the breakeven point at which faster delivery starts paying back through avoided TA cost.
In practice
Validated against an authority with a well-documented financial distress history: a Section 114 notice, followed by temporary accommodation and Housing Benefit costs recently reported as the single largest driver of in-year overspend. The test asks a direct question — would the model have flagged the trajectory in time.
Runs on data you already hold
- H-CLIC returns
- MHCLG homelessness statistics
- Budget monitoring reports
- Revenue outturn (RO) data
- Prevention Grant allocations
Gross temporary accommodation spend rises from £38.6m in year one to £97.9m in year five, while the share recovered through subsidy falls from 39% to 26%.
Test the applicant’s economic case, independently, in the same terms they used.
Jobs, GVA and net fiscal impact, rebuilt from official multipliers — not taken on trust.
Economic Impact Assessments submitted with major applications almost always come from the applicant’s own consultant, using multiplier assumptions that are rarely interrogated before committee. EIAHorizon rebuilds the same calculation independently — using ONS input-output tables for England and StatsWales’ multipliers for Wales — alongside a genuine local fiscal model: Council Tax, Business Rates at the authority’s actual retention share, New Homes Bonus, and CIL or Section 106 contributions.
Economic impact — jobs and output — and fiscal impact — net revenue reaching the authority’s own accounts — are kept visibly separate throughout. It is the single distinction most often lost in developer-submitted assessments.
What officers get
A ten-year net fiscal position reported as a range, an economic impact summary independent of the applicant’s own figures, and a report structured for both the planning committee and the Section 151 officer to read.
In practice
Validated against a real city-centre redevelopment where two independent assessments were produced for the same site as the scheme’s mix changed — the second showing a fall of twenty net jobs when a hotel element was replaced with residential use. EIAHorizon is tested on whether it reproduces that scale and direction of change, not just a single static figure.
Runs on data you already hold
- ONS input-output tables
- StatsWales multipliers
- VOA rating data
- CIL charging schedules
- Council Tax band data
The planning balance turns on the additional figure — 58% of the one an applicant’s assessment usually leads with. £2.14m GVA a year; 570 construction job-years, one-off.
Turn a housing number into a land budget — and show exactly where it does or doesn’t add up.
The standard method figure, reconciled against real land supply, source by source.
Before a council can rely on exceptional circumstances to justify Green Belt or Grey Belt release, it has to show it has genuinely exhausted brownfield capacity and optimised density — a test argued in narrative form in most Local Plan evidence bases, and picked apart line by line by housebuilder representors at examination.
CapacityHorizon replaces the narrative with a transparent waterfall: the standard method need figure, stepped down through existing commitments, brownfield and windfall capacity, density uplift, and any neighbouring authority contribution, to whatever gap genuinely remains. Every step carries its own confidence range rather than a single asserted number, and the model flags which single assumption the gap is most sensitive to — exactly the ground most contested at hearing.
What officers get
A waterfall chart ready for direct inclusion in the Local Plan evidence base, a source-by-source register tracing every figure back to an identifiable site or assumption, and — where a gap remains — the Green Belt or Grey Belt hectarage implication, ready to submit into the examination record.
In practice
Validated against a live Local Plan Examination in which the council’s own evidence and a housebuilder federation’s independent hearing statement both concluded that brownfield capacity, even with density optimised, falls well short of the standard method figure — giving the model two independent parties’ figures to reproduce, not just one side’s case.
Runs on data you already hold
- Standard method calculator
- SHLAA
- Brownfield Land Register
- OS MasterMap / VOA data
- Green Belt Review
Housing need of 14,599 dwellings, less 2,233 existing commitments and 3,006 brownfield and windfall capacity, with no further density uplift available, leaves a residual gap of 9,360 dwellings.
The Authorities’ Monitoring Report, assembled — not compiled by hand once a year.
The same evidence the rest of the suite already produced, turned into the statutory report.
Every authority must report on how its Local Plan is actually performing — housing delivery, land supply, infrastructure funding, policies that aren’t working — and most still do it once a year, by hand, chasing figures across planning, finance and environment teams. In England the duty is to publish as soon as possible after the information is collected, not annually; in Wales the AMR goes to Welsh Government on a statutory timetable. Almost no authority’s process matches either requirement.
LocalPlanHorizon closes that gap by reading data the rest of the suite already holds rather than collecting it again: the site register FiveYearHorizon scores, the land budget outturn CapacityHorizon modelled, and — distinctively — whether a scheme’s promised jobs and GVA in EIAHorizon’s assessment actually materialised once built. Every adopted policy with a measurable target is tested against outturn automatically, so policies that aren’t being implemented are flagged, not missed.
What officers get
A statutory-format annual report ready for publication or submission to Welsh Government, a rolling monitoring view that updates through the year rather than once at year-end, and an Infrastructure Funding Statement generated from the same CIL and Section 106 data rather than compiled separately.
Why it’s bundled, not sold separately
LocalPlanHorizon’s value comes from the data the other four tools already hold — it has little to offer an authority using none of them. It’s included automatically with the Full Suite rather than priced as a fifth standalone product, and isn’t sold on its own.
Draws on
- FiveYearHorizon site register
- CapacityHorizon land budget
- EIAHorizon scheme outcomes
- CIL/S106 receipts
- Housing Delivery Test
The same evidence, reused rather than rebuilt four times over.
Each tool stands on its own, but a housing scheme doesn’t stop being relevant once one team has finished with it. A delivery trajectory tested in FiveYearHorizon is the same trajectory that determines how fast households move out of temporary accommodation in TASpendHorizon.
A residential scheme modelled in EIAHorizon for its fiscal impact is a contribution to the housing pipeline FiveYearHorizon is tracking. The same SHLAA and commitments data CapacityHorizon reconciles against need is the site register FiveYearHorizon scores for deliverability. And at year end, LocalPlanHorizon reads all of it back into the statutory report the authority has to publish anyway.
All four tools follow the same discipline.
Build on official, public data first; report a probability range rather than a single asserted figure; and validate the calculation engine against a real, published outcome before it’s trusted on live evidence.
Public data first
ONS, MHCLG, StatsWales, VOA and the council’s own records — no data licence required to get a working model in front of officers.
Ranges, not single points
Every output is a Monte Carlo–simulated range, with the individual drivers of downside risk named, not hidden inside an average.
Validated against reality
Each tool is tested against a real, publicly documented outcome before it’s offered as evidence a council can rely on.
Built for officers who have to defend the number, not just produce it.
For a walkthrough of FiveYearHorizon, TASpendHorizon, EIAHorizon or CapacityHorizon — or the Full Suite, with LocalPlanHorizon included — against your own authority’s data, get in touch.