Employment Land Assessment or Economic Impact Assessment

An Employment Land Assessment answers a land question: should this site stay in employment use. An Economic Impact Assessment answers an effect question: what does the proposal do to jobs, output and local spending. They are commissioned at different moments, they draw on different evidence, and submitting one where the council wanted the other is a common reason for a validation query on a commercial or mixed-use scheme.

The confusion is understandable. Both documents talk about jobs. Both get used to support the redevelopment of an industrial estate or an underused office block. But an officer weighing a loss of employment floorspace against an adopted protection policy needs the first, and a member of a planning committee asking what the town gets out of a scheme is asking for the second.

What each study is answering

An Employment Land Assessment looks backwards and sideways. It describes the site, its condition, its access and service yard, its floorspace by use, its occupancy history, and how it sits within the authority's stock of employment land. It then tests whether the site remains fit for employment use and whether the local supply can absorb its loss. The conclusion is about suitability and supply.

An Economic Impact Assessment looks forward. It quantifies the employment and economic activity a proposal would create or displace, usually split into construction-phase effects and operational effects, expressed as full-time equivalent jobs and as gross value added. The conclusion is about scale of benefit.

A site can pass one test and fail the other. A distribution unit that has stood empty for years, with a yard too small for modern vehicles and no realistic prospect of reletting, may well be surplus even though its redevelopment for housing creates fewer permanent jobs than the building did at its peak. Both facts are true, and each belongs in a different document.

Land supply against economic effect

The land question is framed by the authority's own evidence base. Local plans are supported by employment land reviews and by housing and economic development needs assessments, which set out how much employment land the area needs over the plan period and how much it has. Those documents are public, they date quickly, and the figures in them are the ones the officer will use.

Read the plan's employment policy carefully before deciding what to submit. Policies protecting employment sites usually fall into one of three shapes: an absolute protection for allocated sites, a protection subject to marketing evidence, or a criteria-based policy that allows loss where the site is demonstrably unsuitable and alternative provision is made. The shape of the policy tells you what evidence will move it.

The effect question is framed differently. Nobody is measuring your job figures against an adopted target. They are being weighed in the planning balance alongside housing delivery, design, heritage and everything else, so the credibility of the method matters more than the size of the number.

Marketing evidence for the loss of an employment site

Where the policy requires marketing, the evidence has to be real. That means an agent instructed on open terms, a quoting rent and price that reflect the condition of the building rather than an aspiration, marketing across the channels a business in that sector would actually look at, and a record of enquiries with reasons for each one falling away.

The plan or an adopted supplementary planning document normally states the marketing period and the method it expects, so check the wording rather than assuming a standard. Councils look hardest at three things: whether the asking terms were realistic, whether the property was offered in a configuration a modern occupier could use, and whether any enquiry was turned away.

Condition evidence sits alongside it. A structural appraisal, a schedule of dilapidations, an assessment of floor-to-ceiling heights, yard depth, power supply and loading arrangements, and an estimate of the cost of bringing the building to a lettable standard all speak to suitability. Where the cost of refurbishment exceeds the value of the refurbished asset, that is a viability argument, and viability evidence works differently at application stage than at plan making.

One more point that catches people out. The flexibility within Class E of the Use Classes Order means many office and light industrial buildings can change use between commercial, business and service uses without a planning application at all, and the prior approval route for commercial to residential changes has its own tests. Establish what the building can already do lawfully before you build an argument about losing it, because prior approval and planning permission are not the same process.

Where the job figures come from

An Economic Impact Assessment that states a job number without a method invites the officer to ignore it. The chain should be visible from floorspace to jobs to output.

The usual sequence runs like this. Take the proposed gross internal floorspace by use. Apply an employment density, drawn from a published density guide and stated with its source and date, to convert floorspace to jobs. Convert headcount to full-time equivalents. Apply gross value added per worker for the relevant sector, taken from official statistics rather than from a rule of thumb. Then adjust for additionality: leakage outside the study area, displacement of existing activity, substitution, and multiplier effects through supply chains and employee spending.

Construction-phase employment is calculated separately, usually from construction cost and a published output-per-job ratio, and expressed as person-years rather than permanent jobs. Presenting temporary construction employment as though it were ongoing is the single most common error in these documents, and experienced officers spot it immediately.

State the study area. A claim about jobs created in a borough is a different claim from jobs created in a travel-to-work area, and displacement looks very different at each scale.

The policy tests each one responds to

The National Planning Policy Framework, in its August 2026 edition, asks plans and decisions to support economic growth and productivity and to take account of local business needs, and it is also the source of the general presumption that decisions are made in accordance with the development plan. State the edition whenever you cite it, because the Framework was renumbered in December 2024 and re-issued with policy-coded chapters in August 2026.

An Employment Land Assessment responds to the development plan's employment protection policy and to the authority's employment land evidence base. An Economic Impact Assessment responds to the economic benefit side of the planning balance and, on larger schemes, to policies asking for local employment and training commitments that will end up in a section 106 agreement.

Neither document decides anything by itself. Both are inputs to a judgement.

When an authority asks for both

Mixed-use redevelopment of an employment allocation is the classic case. The council wants to know whether the employment land can be released, and what the replacement scheme delivers. Here the two studies should be written to talk to each other: the land assessment establishes the baseline of existing employment on the site, and the impact assessment uses that same baseline when it calculates net change rather than inventing a second one.

Inconsistent baselines between two consultants' reports do more damage than a weak conclusion. Agree the floorspace schedule, the existing occupancy and the study area before either author starts writing.

Where the scheme involves retail or leisure floorspace, a third document may be triggered by the town centre tests, and the choice between an outline and a full application will change how much detail the economic case can carry at this stage.

Putting the evidence in front of the officer

Lead each report with a short statement of the question it answers and the policy it responds to. Put the method in the body and the workings in an appendix. Give every number a source and a date. Where a figure is uncertain, give a range and say which end of it you regard as realistic.

Both documents benefit from a table that maps each policy requirement to the paragraph that answers it. Officers under time pressure use that table, and its absence is why good evidence sometimes goes unread.

PlanScope can draft both report types alongside the rest of an application pack, structured to UK planning policy and flagged with a TO BE CONFIRMED marker wherever a figure or a source is missing. Browse the full list of report types to see how they sit together, or enter your postcode on PlanScope to see which reports your site is likely to need.

PlanScope provides AI-assisted draft reports for planning applications. Reports should be reviewed before submission. We do not guarantee planning approval. This is general guidance rather than legal advice, and the position should be checked with your local planning authority or a qualified professional.