Site search map with comments from residents and details of a highlighted site

Created by planners, for planners

PlaceMaker, the digital Local Plan platform

Our award-winning digital Local Plan software, PlaceMaker, is purpose-built in partnership with the councils who are using it to create more sustainable places.

Identify and assess every site in your area

Site Search

  • Proactively identify sites with custom search criteria
  • View all search results on a map or in a table (with totals and averages across your site selections)
  • Automate site assessments using development scenarios and assess every site in your Local Authority area

Site Details

  • Take a closer look at analysis for each site on the Site Details page
  • Customise the fields shown across all sites for your organisation
  • Update Site Details and track changes
  • See Call for Sites submissions in Site Details
  • Assign team members and external consultants to sites for comments and collaboration

Call for Sites

  • Create custom Call for Sites forms or use templates to save time
  • Allow external users to draw site submissions and add these sites to your central database for assessment
  • Call for Sites data is available throughout PlaceMaker, including in your Site Search and Site Details pages
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Public Web and Suggestions Maps

  • Share the details of a set of sites with an interactive map
  • Allow suggestions from the public about what they would like to happen in a particular place

Site Lists

  • Organise sites into lists and share them with your team
  • Site Lists can be used to create options like 'Sites with good accessibility inside the green belt'

Purpose-built features for your Local Plan process

Combine the power of your local data and our national datasets

With PlaceMaker you don't need to be a GIS expert to add or refresh sites or layer data in PlaceMaker. Our GIS experts can assist you in building your site assessment catalogue, combining your council-owned data sets and Call for Sites data with public data from Land Registry, ONS and more.

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Assess all the sites in your Local Authority area

Combine national datasets, Land Registry data, Call for Sites submissions and your existing databases. Assess every site in your area and proactively identify potential locations for development with suitability scoring and capacity analysis.

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Track changes and collaborate

Each Site Details page creates a reliable log of all activity related to a site in the platform - such as specialist comments, site tags in feedback or assessment updates.

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Digitalise your Call for Sites process

The public can submit sites using an easy-to-use drawing tool, removing the need for officers to manually upload GIS files. Submitted sites, along with any additional details provided, are added to your PlaceMaker site database for review.

Submissions are automatically scored to help officers sift and prioritise sites for further assessment. Find out how North East Derbyshire reduced their call for sites assessment time by 86% using PlaceMaker.

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Test development scenarios and growth strategies

PlaceMaker's residential, commercial, open-space or custom development scenarios can test how your sites perform under different strategic or policy approaches.

For example, adjust the distance that sites need to be from a type of amenity, set a percentage overlap with a layer or constraint, or test new density policies to calculate a suitability score for sites under these conditions. Discover how Newcastle use PlaceMaker to understand density and capacity across the city to support housing delivery.

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Collaborate beyond Local Authority boundaries

Codified assessments created within PlaceMaker enable Local Authorities to collaborate across Housing Market Areas or wider regions, making strategic and consistent assessment possible beyond your Local Authority boundaries.

Read how three councils used PlaceMaker to create a shared Land Availability Assessment methodology for their Housing Market Area.

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Our results in numbers

We're proud to be delivering results for councils across the UK

86%

Faster Site Assessments for North East Derbyshire

Call for Sites Submissions

4,480

As of February 2025

70%

Quicker BNG Call For Sites for Somerset

People living in PlaceMaker Councils

6.2M

Sites Assessed for Birmingham

330k

All the features you need to identify promising sites

Mock up of our layer viewing functionMock up of our custom site toolSite details bannera mock up of our scenario modelling and custom analysis feature

Build interactive consultations and engaging reports

Save time creating engaging digital documents

Read case study

With charts, images, videos, maps and more: our drag-and-drop Document Builder makes it easy to communicate complex ideas in mobile-friendly reports and consultation documents.

Embed consultation questions directly into your reports, so your audience can understand your proposals and respond all in one place.

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Easy to share with stakeholders

Share your published reports and consultations with a simple link and anyone can read them without signing in. So, your plan can be seen by all your stakeholders.

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Spot trends in your feedback

With our analysis charts you can easily visualise answers and respondent demographics to guage how different parts of your community feel. Make use of PlaceMaker's table, usage and text analysis to overview all responses to your consultation questions.

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Manage and respond to representations

Receive reps in any format

Whether that's Letters, PDFs, emails, Call for Sites submissions or consultation responses. They can all work with our platform's Representation Manager.

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Collaborate, analyse and tag feedback

Longer, multi-topic representations can be broken up into sub-reps and assigned to colleagues to work on.

Our long-form text analysis tool lets you visualise the topics covered in longer reps and shows the sentiment associated with each topic.

Reps that are tagged with site locations are also visible from the Site Details page for each site.

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Speed up response-times with templates

In the Representation Manager, you can stitch together pre-saved response paragraphs based on the topics and sentiments in a rep.

Allowing your team to save time, whilst providing each stakeholder with a relevant and personalised response.

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Our results in numbers

With the Rep Manager, Hounslow Council spend

15 mins

per comment on average

77%

Faster average rep processing time for Hounslow using PlaceMaker

Meet Regulation 19 requirements with sharing

You can export your reps and responses as CSVs or charts, which can be inserted into our Document Builder digital documents or shared through other platforms.

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Everything you need for an effective consultation

A collage of our doc builder features

See our product in action

Speakers from
Hounslow, Birmingham and Tonbridge & Malling Councils
Fill in our quick form to watch our digital showcase
Speakers from
MHCLG, Milton Keynes and Central Bedfordshire Councils
Register to watch our webinar with The Planner on-demand now

Get started with a demo

Our no obligation PlaceMaker demos are delivered by Planners (not sales people)
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