Redesign cycles. Holding-cost bleed. A refusal written into your documents months before the committee met. V-Score reads the full submission first and shows you where the scheme is exposed, while there is still time to act.
Built on an intelligence corpus of 500 planning decisions and applied across 28 live schemes. On a blind run, we identified five of the six findings the GLA went on to raise. On another, we calculated the settlement range before the outcome existed. The misses are published below, diagnosed, and converted into standing rules.
A build-to-rent scheme in London. The developer applied to remove the affordable housing already secured under an existing consent, on viability grounds. We froze the document record months before the decision and withheld everything that followed.
VSCORE put the settlement between £1.08m and £2.29m. The actual payment, agreed nine months later, was around £1.5m.
It got the settlement mechanism wrong, and that is published too. Every miss becomes a standing rule in the methodology.
Send us the application reference and we'll tell you, free, whether it's the kind of scheme where an audit would change anything.
You see the case against your scheme before it is made. The most valuable findings come from viability forensics: reading the submitted appraisal against its own evidence. Below is what that has surfaced, followed by the validation programme behind the method, including where it has missed.
of the Land Benchmark derived from circular residual-on-residual inputs, and a 100% debt-finance assumption applied to an institutional, equity-funded applicant: inputs that inflate the apparent viability deficit used to justify only 20% affordable housing.
The applicant's own submitted appendices contained the Council reviewer's contrary figures: the evidence against the case was sitting inside the applicant's own document set, unread.
A finance assumption inconsistent with the applicant's actual funding structure materially inflated the apparent viability deficit: the same class of error, found again by reading the appraisal against its own inputs.
On complex schemes the viability findings are worth more than every design finding combined, because they determine how much affordable housing gets built and what obligations get secured.
Across 28 live schemes analysed, eight have been scored blind against a published Stage 1 response. The risks we identified on those were checked against the authority's own words once published, and the results, hits and misses, are set out below.
We flagged the on-site carbon shortfall as a decisive, standalone risk. The GLA's Stage 1 response called it "unacceptable", the same word.
We identified the tower's massing as non-compliant with London Plan Policy D9(B). The authority confirmed the D9(B) non-compliance.
We predicted the authority would require early- and late-stage viability review mechanisms. The Stage 1 response demanded them near word-for-word.
We assessed the application as approvable only if early- and late-stage review mechanisms were secured. The authority's response required exactly that.
We log and diagnose every miss. On the LEB Building run we did not flag whole-life carbon non-compliance under Policy SI2 in the original pass; that miss produced a standing whole-life-carbon check now applied to every scheme. Each diagnosed miss becomes a rule fed back into the methodology, which is why the calibration programme, not any single result, is the credibility engine.
Run on the LEB Building submission before the Stage 1 letter was available. The methodology separates standing predictions (the asks any experienced planner would expect) from findings that required reading the documents against each other. Both are shown; only the latter is differentiated work.
| Ref | V-Score finding · May 2026 | GLA Stage 1 | Timeline | Layer |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| P-01 | Energy non-compliance: individual panel heaters breach SI3; communal redesign required | "…not compliant with SI3… revised to propose a communal system." – Para 66 | V-Score: May 2026 GLA Stage 1: 2026 |
Standing ask |
| P-02 | Carbon shortfall: 39% on-site reduction below London Plan threshold; offset payment required | "…achieves a 39% reduction… A carbon offset payment will be required." – Para 68 | V-Score: May 2026 GLA Stage 1: 2026 |
Differentiated |
| P-03 | Cycle parking deficit: below minimum standard; S106-secured free-to-hire scheme required | "…does not meet minimum cycle parking standards… secured by S106." – Para 58 | V-Score: May 2026 GLA Stage 1: 2026 |
Standing ask |
| P-04 | Heritage balance deferred: less than substantial harm to 12 assets; Stage 2 balancing outstanding | "…less than substantial harm to 12 designated heritage assets…" – Para 54 | V-Score: May 2026 GLA Stage 1: 2026 |
Differentiated |
| P-05 | S106 incomplete: affordability and nominations agreement not secured | "Affordability and early-stage review should be secured by condition… nominations agreement to be S106-secured." – Para 23–24 | V-Score: May 2026 GLA Stage 1: 2026 |
Standing ask |
| P-06 | WLC non-compliance under Policy SI2, not flagged in original run | Whole life carbon assessment non-compliance under Policy SI2 – Para 70 | Not in May 2026 run GLA Stage 1: 2026 |
Miss · now a standing rule |
PA/26/00212 · GLA ref 2026/0115/S1 · Bethnal Green, Tower Hamlets · AHMM for Telford Homes
The energy, cycle-parking and S106 asks are standing predictions the methodology makes on almost any scheme of this type; they are shown for completeness, not as evidence of edge.
Before delivery, each report undergoes a second adversarial verification pass: every claim and citation is tested back against the source documents it relies on. It is the same discipline we apply to an applicant's appraisal, turned on our own work.
113 of 113 claims and citations traced back to their source documents on the most recent verification pass.
Planning applications fail on predictable, findable weaknesses: the evidence is in the documents months before the decision.
V-Score reads the full submission the way the GLA reads it and scores the exposure across five dimensions, before it is submitted.
On a blind run, the method identified five of the GLA's six Stage 1 findings before the Stage 1 letter existed. The miss is published above.
Planning risk has a price tag. Most refusals are visible in the documents months before the decision. We find them while they are still cheap to fix.
The officer flags a heritage issue or viability inconsistency at Stage 1. The applicant redesigns. The programme slips by a quarter. Holding costs accumulate. The revised scheme goes back in without independent scrutiny of the fix.
Every month between submission and decision costs money. Land carry, finance charges, management overhead. A delay caused by a predictable objection (viability, heritage, carbon compliance) is avoidable capital destruction.
Every contested refusal exposes your legal team to a challenge that was already documented in your submission. An officer's report is assembled from your own documents. If the inconsistency was there, the officer found it. V-Score finds it first.
V-Score reads across the entire submission – not document by document – finding the internal inconsistencies, evidential gaps and policy failures a rigorous planning officer would use, then scoring them by severity.
On one audited scheme we found that a 77% AUV-derived benchmark, 100% debt finance for an institutional applicant, and an assumed (not derived) affordable percentage together manufactured a viability deficit used to justify only 20% affordable housing. Correcting those three inputs alone narrows or eliminates the claimed gap – without touching the design.
It is a deal-saver. On complex schemes, the viability and legal enforceability findings are worth more than all the design findings combined – because they directly affect what gets built, what gets secured, and what survives at appeal.
The score expresses where the application is exposed, what an officer could write, and what would move the number, not a prediction of what the committee will decide.
Every report is produced by a senior practitioner supported by advanced analysis to interrogate the full document set. The technology does the heavy lifting; every report is reviewed and signed off by a chartered town planner (MRTPI) before delivery. The result is an independent, technically robust read backed by a named planner, not a black box.
A pre-submission audit that quantifies planning risk before design spend is committed and before the programme is exposed. You see where the scheme is vulnerable while there is still time and budget to fix it, not after an officer has written the refusal out of your own documents.
Independent planning-risk intelligence from a party with no interest in the scheme proceeding, including a forensic read of the Financial Viability Assessment that drives the affordable-housing offer and the obligations that get secured.
V-Score is an independent risk audit service. We do not act for the applicant. We have no interest in whether the scheme proceeds. Every finding is signed off by a chartered planner (MRTPI).
The analysis is only credible because named practitioners stand behind it. Two people carry the report.
Reports are reviewed and validated by Steve Hesmondhalgh MRTPI, an independent chartered town planner with forty years across major applications, appeals and public inquiries. He applies the judgment, and signs off the findings, before any report is delivered.
Two architectural honours degrees and 25 years producing planning-grade visual evidence to the LI TGN 06/19 standard. Visual-evidence findings are anchored solely to that published standard.
A c.20-storey mixed-use tower in a World Heritage Site buffer zone scored 41/100 Orange in a calibration audit run from the public application file. V-Score identified six Critical findings: heritage harm confirmed by three separate consultee positions, a viability benchmark 77% derived from a residual-on-residual AUV engaging the Parkhurst Road circularity test, and 100% debt finance assumed for an institutional applicant.
Full remediation would move the scheme from 41 (Orange) to a projected 71 (Green), at a fraction of the cost of a contested refusal and appeal.
Forensic dissection of the refusal: exactly what was objected to, the minimum viable fix, resubmission strategy and appeal route analysis. The wedge when the demand trigger is already live.
A full five-dimension read of your submission documents before committee: where the application is exposed, so your team can act before the officer does. Includes a fix review once you have responded.
We audit their appraisal. We never write our own. An independent read of the submitted Financial Viability Assessment against its own evidence (benchmark, finance assumptions, and derivation) to show where the case does not hold.
Multi-scheme programmes, portfolio due diligence, and institutional engagements are scoped individually. From £7,500, quote only.
Payment terms: all fees are fixed and payable on commission. Delivery is within 10 working days from receipt of a complete document set and cleared funds. Every commission is under our standard engagement letter: liability cap, client-only reliance, confidentiality. See conflicts & disclosure.
Every week the vulnerabilities stay in, they stay in. Send us the application reference and we confirm scope within 24 hours. Fixed fee. No payment until scope is agreed.
Send us the application reference and we'll tell you, free, whether it's the kind of scheme where an audit would change anything.