Financial viability in planning: conduct and reporting
Published May 2019
Effective from 1 September 2019
Reissued April 2023
This 1st edition professional standard sets out mandatory requirements that inform the practitioner on what must be included within financial viability assessments and how the process must be conducted.
This is to demonstrate how a reasonable, objective and impartial outcome, without interference, should be arrived at, and so support the statutory planning decision process. It also aims to support and complement the government's reforms to the planning process announced in July 2018 and subsequent updates, which include an overhaul of the National Planning Policy Framework and Planning Practice Guidance on viability and related matters.
The new policy and practice advice prioritises the assessment of viability at the plan-making stage and identifies existing use value as the starting point for assessing the uplift in value required to incentivise the release of land.
Given that planning applications involve a statutory process that is subject to public scrutiny, the requirements in this professional standard are important in providing public confidence in a process that is inevitably complex, but nevertheless must inform the planning decision-maker.
This document was reissued in April 2023 as a professional standard. It had previously been published in May 2019 as a professional statement. No material changes have been made to the document.