Prior + Partners has joined Round 6 of the PropTech Innovation Fund with a focus on building the regional evidence base for plan-making.
The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG)’s Digital Planning Programme and PUBLIC are co-delivering Round 6 of the PropTech Innovation Fund, which has selected 11 finalist consortia to share £2.4 million piloting digital solutions to some of planning’s toughest challenges including cross-boundary plan-making and Section 106 negotiations.
Plan-making, particularly for Spatial Development Strategies, where boundaries are new and evidence has to be drawn together across multiple authorities, is often costly, resource-intensive and fragmented. Without shared digital infrastructure, incompatible data and inconsistent standards duplicate effort, drain public funds, delay plans and prolong uncertainty for developers and communities alike.
As part of Round 6 of the Digital Planning programme’s PropTech Innovation Fund, Prior + Partners are working alongside Essex County Council, Southend-on-Sea City Council, Thurrock Council and Lancashire Combined County Authority to develop the Digital Spatial Development Strategy (SDS) Hub to tackle this issue. The Digital SDS Hub is a single integrated workspace that will bring together the full SDS process: evidence analysis, visioning, land assessment, and option generation and testing, with future potential for monitoring.
This work connects directly to what we’ve been building through Place+ which demonstrates our ongoing exploration of how better data, evidence and digital tools can support more joined-up, strategic decisions about place. The PropTech Fund pilot gives us a live, practical testbed for those ideas, working directly with authorities facing these wider plan-making issues.
As part of this, Prior + Partners’ Director Shaun Andrews will speak on the Pilot Consortia Panel at the PropTech Innovation Fund Round 6: Virtual Kickoff Event on 30 September, alongside representatives from Bioregional, City Science, Esri UK and SimAnalytica and their partner authorities, discussing what it takes to build a workable regional evidence base for planning.
Find out more about the event here.
