Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities
The Local Authority projects we fund will align with our vision of enabling a modern and efficient planning system in England, shifting a documents-based system to one that is data-driven, standards-based, and powered by modern user-centred products and services.
About the funds
In 2023 there were two funds available:
- The Digital Planning Improvement Fund: Round 2
- The PropTech Innovation Fund: Round 4
Local Authorities were invited to apply to both funds. Applications closed on Friday 1 December 2023.
The Digital Planning Improvement Fund: Round 2
The Digital Planning Improvement Fund provided 43 local planning authorities with £100,000 funding and support to adopt modern planning practices within planning data, digital capabilities and development management software.
Funding supported local planning authorities to:
- Understand digital planning maturity in their organisation to baseline a starting point for action
- Co-create an action plan to help improve digital planning maturity and support readiness for the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill legislation changes
- Gain access to training and improvement opportunities
- Identify, improve and publish datasets to the Planning Data Platform
- Join the Open Digital Planning (ODP) community.
The PropTech Innovation Fund: Round 4
In August 2021 we launched the Property Technology (PropTech) Innovation Fund to support the widespread adoption of digital citizen engagement tools and transform community involvement in planning. This is the largest UK Government PropTech programme funding local authorities to work with industry at pace and scale to radically transform how communities can engage in the planning system.
Round 4 of the PropTech Innovation Fund supports projects that demonstrate the benefits of how digital solutions can be utilised across either of the following areas:
- Land Assessment – improving current approaches to identifying and evaluating sites, including viability and feasibility assessments, analysing small sites, or land assembly projects. This includes tools which automate assessments, aggregate and visualise data sets or enable predictive modelling and scenario testing
- Digital Citizen Engagement – visualising planning proposals to increase transparency and understanding for communities and stakeholders
