Cost and Viability in Planning and Development

Through planning policy requirements, developers are required to engage early on viability issues during the initial planning process. Sites must also demonstrate that they can be brought forward with a suitable level of contribution to the local community, whilst delivering an acceptable level of profit for the developer.

In today’s world of cost inflation and scarcity of suitable land it essential to benchmark and appraise sites as early as possible in the planning and development lifecycle.

Brookbanks is in a unique position of being able to advise landowners, land promoters, and developers at every stage of development on both costs and viability using our innovative tools and our cradle to grave approach. We utilise our in-house specialist teams comprised of experts who can deliver cost effective and reliable advice.

We pride ourselves on ensuring that decisions made during the planning process result in deliverable and cost-effective schemes for our clients. Without this, planning consents risk being gained without the true cost and buildability of a scheme being fully appraised.

Please contact us for more information on what we can do to assist your scheme.

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Podcast Episode #17: Moving Places, Managing Noise

May 20, 2026

As development sites become more constrained and expectations around placemaking continue to rise, the interaction between transport planning and acoustics is playing an increasingly important role in successful design. In our latest podcast, “Moving Places, Managing Noise,” Ben Wakling is joined by Melanie A’Lee and Tom Quaife-Jones to explore how these two disciplines come together in practice. The discussion focuses on how early coordination between transport and noise specialists can improve scheme viability, reduce planning risk and ultimately create better places to live.

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Integrated Acoustic Consultancy Services

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Expanding our specialist services to include integrated acoustic consultancy strengthens how we support clients across the full development lifecycle. By bringing together building acoustics and environmental noise and vibration, we are able to provide a more coordinated and consistent approach to sound, from early feasibility through to detailed design. This article introduces our acoustics capability at Brookbanks, outlining the expertise within the team and the role acoustics plays in delivering compliant, well‑designed and high‑performing environments across a range of sectors.

The Risk of Stalling Healthcare Projects

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The Risks Stalling Healthcare Projects There's a version of every healthcare project that looks deliverable on paper. The site sits within the right catchment. It's in the strategic outline case. The ICS has signed off on the clinical model, the design team have done something genuinely thoughtful with the brief, and the project team is cautiously optimistic about hitting the OBC submission window. Then the ground investigation comes back… or the highways authority raises a junction capacity objection that nobody reviewed thoroughly during site selection. Or the drainage strategy is finalised two weeks before the planning committee, and the mitigation required has discreetly added seven figures to a capital budget that is already full of assumptions. This might be “just how things are”, but it’s important to remember that healthcare projects carry specific consequences that a delayed commercial scheme may not have.