Competence for an economic impact assessment

No licence, chartership or competent person regime governs who writes an economic impact assessment for a planning application. That is the honest answer, and it cuts both ways. Anyone can produce one, so the weight an officer gives it depends entirely on whether the method is transparent and the figures survive a reading by the authority's own economist. In practice the work is done by economic development consultancies, by economists inside multidisciplinary planning practices, and occasionally by university units, and the person who writes it needs to understand gross value added, employment density and additionality rather than planning policy alone.

What the assessment is used for in the planning balance

Economic benefit is a material consideration. The current National Planning Policy Framework, published on 17 August 2026, asks decision takers to support economic growth, and an economic impact assessment is how a developer puts a number on that side of the balance. State the edition whenever you cite the Framework, because it was renumbered in December 2024 and re-issued with policy-coded chapters in 2026.

The assessment earns its keep in two situations. Where a scheme has a policy conflict to overcome, the economic case is part of the argument that benefits outweigh harm. Where a site is allocated or uncontroversial, a short statement of jobs and gross value added usually satisfies a validation requirement and nothing more.

That distinction should drive the budget. A marginal application in the countryside, or a departure from an employment allocation, needs evidence that will be read sceptically. An allocated business park extension does not.

Who is competent to write one

Look for three things in the author's credentials. First, applied economic appraisal experience, meaning they have built additionality cases before and had them challenged. Second, familiarity with the published appraisal conventions used in the public sector, chiefly the Treasury's Green Book and the additionality framework that grew out of it. Third, planning literacy, so the output answers the policy question rather than reading like a market study.

There is no protected title here. An economist may hold a membership that signals peer recognition, and a chartered surveyor or chartered planner leading the commission adds professional accountability through their institute's code, but neither is a statutory requirement. What matters more is that the report names its author and carries a date, with a method section someone else could reproduce.

Be wary of a report that presents outputs with no stated source for its ratios. If the employment density, the multiplier and the construction value cannot each be traced to a published figure, the numbers are assertions.

Where the multipliers come from

Multipliers convert direct effects into indirect and induced effects. A Type I multiplier captures supply chain spending, and a Type II multiplier adds the spending of wages earned. They are derived from input-output tables published by the Office for National Statistics, and they vary by sector and by the geography being modelled.

Three errors recur. Applying a national multiplier to a district economy overstates the retained benefit, because much of the supply chain sits outside the district. Using a Type II multiplier without saying so inflates the headline. And applying a multiplier to gross jobs rather than to net additional jobs compounds an error that was already in the figure.

State the year of every source. Densities and multipliers are revised, and an officer checking a ratio against the current publication will notice if the report used a figure from a decade ago without saying so.

Construction and operational phase employment

Construction employment is temporary and should be reported as person-years, not as a job count. A development that supports 200 person-years of construction employment over a three-year build is not creating 200 permanent jobs, and reporting it as though it does is the single most common overstatement in these documents.

Operational employment comes from floorspace converted through employment density ratios, adjusted for the actual occupier where one is known. A pre-let to a known business gives firm numbers and should be used in preference to a ratio. Where the end user is unknown, give a range and say which use class assumption drives it, since the difference between a light industrial and an office assumption on the same floorspace is large.

For an employment land assessment the question is different again, because that document tests supply and demand across an area rather than the effect of one scheme.

Double counting and overstatement

Four traps account for most of the figures that get struck out on review.

1. Counting construction jobs and operational jobs as a combined total, when they occur in different periods.
2. Presenting gross value added and employment as separate benefits, when the gross value added figure is derived from those same jobs.
3. Including business rates and council tax receipts as a benefit to the local authority without netting off the cost of services, and without acknowledging the retention arrangements that determine how much the authority actually keeps.
4. Counting the relocation of an existing local business as new employment.

Section 106 commitments on local employment and training are often folded into the benefit case. They belong in the report, but as a mechanism rather than as additional jobs, and the drafting should match the heads of terms rather than an aspiration.

How the authority will discount the figures

Expect the authority to apply the additionality tests in sequence. Deadweight strips out activity that would have happened anyway. Leakage removes benefits accruing to people outside the area. Displacement accounts for activity drawn from other businesses or centres, and substitution for a business simply swapping one activity for another. Each step reduces the gross figure, and a report that presents only the gross number invites the officer to do the reduction unilaterally, usually more harshly than the consultant would have.

Larger authorities commission their own review. Where that happens the argument shifts onto method, and a report with a clear audit trail wins. Where the two sides disagree, the process follows the same pattern as any other case where a council's expert disagrees with your consultant.

Retail and leisure schemes attract a separate line of challenge about trade diversion from existing centres, which overlaps with the sequential and impact tests rather than with economics proper.

Presenting the result honestly

Lead with net additional figures at the geography the policy cares about, which is usually the district and sometimes a defined regeneration area. Put gross figures and every intermediate step in an appendix. Give the construction phase its own short section expressed in person-years. State each assumption, its source and its publication year, and show the arithmetic.

Then say what the assessment does not cover. An economic impact assessment is not a viability appraisal, and the two should never be conflated: one measures benefit to the area, the other tests what the scheme can afford, which is the subject of a separate viability assessment.

A reviewer who can follow the method will accept a modest number. A reviewer who cannot will discount a large one to nothing. If you need a reviewer for the finished draft, the professional directory is the route to a review request and sign-off.

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