The Carto Group launches new site appraisal platform LandHawk

The Carto Group founder Tim Hughes revealed LandHawk to industry professionals, including the Land and New Homes Network and the Ordnance Survey, after working on a way to save time and money for planners submitting applications for possible developments.

Mr Hughes said: “We have been developing LandHawk over the past year and we are very excited to be able to finally have on board our first customers and partners.

“Our mission is to help land and property developers get their projects over the line efficiently and with more reliable results.

“The knock-on effect of using LandHawk will be that local planning departments will receive much more reliable planning applications as the planners will be much better informed by data that lies within their development area.”

LandHawk is the only software available that returns an in-depth search with a traffic-light scoring system aligned to the government’s National Planning Framework.

Using more than 100 geo-spatial data sets, the software gives planners more information than any other platform on the market.

The algorithm has been devised in-house by software engineers from The Carto Group, LandHawk’s parent company, which has extensive experience in land searches in multiple sectors spanning 20 years.

The next phase of the site appraisal platform will include a 3D building tool which helps developers see what’s possible to build on each parcel of land.

Mr Hughes added: “The 3D building tool allows architects and planners to sketch buildings in the app to instantly see their effect on an area and perform desktop feasibility studies.

“This will mitigate the need for costly high-level feasibility studies because some of the work will be able to be undertaken by the developer or land agent themselves.

“This is a great tool for stakeholder engagement and communicating ideas to potential builders and investors.”