Strengthening the role of place in business cases
The introduction of place based business cases has the potential to transform approaches to regional economic planning under the 2026 Green Book update. While we await the detail, using place based analysis can help to show why investment matters and how it benefits our local communities.
New for 2026 – Place based business cases
Following the Chancellor’s 2025 review of the Green Book, the Treasury plans to publish the update in January 2026. For those who use it, the Green Book matters: it sets the rules for how government at every level judges value for money. With the current version and its supplementary material running to more than 1,000 pages, AMION helps clients navigate the guidance and apply it in practice.
At the top of the changes sits the new place based business case. This approach will bundle projects under shared place objectives, addressing concerns long raised by metro mayors and regional leaders that the Green Book skews investment towards London and the South East. Many areas still grappling with the legacy of de-industrialisation see this as a chance to raise standards and close gaps.
Those with memories of recent initiatives such as the Towns Fund – which allowed town boards to develop town investment plans, feeding into individual project level business cases – will look on with interest to see the form that new place based business cases will take. The intention to develop coordinated programmes of intervention under clear place based objectives, weighing up policy and investment choices is welcome. The challenge will be creating a process that is streamlined, allows bundling of projects at different stages of design development, and avoids duplication.
What can partners in regional economic development do ahead of the latest Green Book update? The signs point to three priorities:
- Targeting – ground policy in a detailed understanding of place, and how local conditions shape economic outcomes and community life.
- Planning – coordinate strategies for priority places, addressing root challenges rather than surface-level issues.
- Prioritising – Building effective and robust option appraisal into strategic planning activities, applying long-standing Green Book principles.
AMION, as a national expert in placemaking and Green Book economics, stands ready to help local partners prepare for this shift.
What about the current Green Book?
As we wait for the next update, pressure to promote investment that unlocks growth in our regions – including regions which have been a long-standing target for policy interventions – remains. This includes the delivery of previous central government programmes that targeted funding towards areas that were deemed to be ‘left behind’ in the wake of economic restructuring and global events.
The wait for the update does not reduce the urgency of promoting investment to unlock regional growth. This includes long-standing policy priorities to promote ‘renewal’, ‘regeneration’ and ‘levelling-up’ in the most deprived areas – challenges exacerbated by global events over recent years.
Recent work in the West Midlands illustrates this. More than a decade after Enterprise Zone status was granted, derelict and contaminated sites still need attention. The goal remains to tackle blight, attract investment, and create jobs in communities facing high deprivation. The proposed use of retained business rates for land remediation and viability gap funding aligns with policy objectives. Yet standard Green Book appraisal techniques struggle to capture value for money. So what can we do?
Some might argue for downgrading the value for money test. But abandoning evidence-based appraisal risks both poor investment choices and the credibility of regional policy. Fortunately, the current Green Book already offers tools to make the case.
Our past newsletters have highlighted how regeneration schemes can demonstrate value by factoring in external benefits alongside land values. Current Green Book guidance also allows for place based appraisal, which becomes vital when looking at industrial and commercial uses where external benefits are harder to capture. The Treasury itself confirms: ‘Where the objectives of proposals have a specific spatial focus then place based analysis should be central to appraisal and the advice it supports.’ What does this mean in practice? We’re moving back towards approaches that integrate the assessment of local employment and productivity effects, alongside the standard Green Book methodology.
In bringing back these approaches, we have to address longstanding criticisms – particularly the lack of good evidence that supports assumptions and underpins robust appraisal. Again, the Green Book emphasises that, “Public bodies that routinely engage in place based interventions should collect data to develop an objectively based, well researched evidence base to support decision making.” Alongside writing the book on additionality, over the last five years AMION has evaluated more than 100 projects with an emphasis on assessing local economic impact. This provides us with a wealth of evidence to inform place based appraisal.
Communicating economic benefit
Technical appraisal matters, but residents and their representatives want to know how investment affects daily life: jobs, housing, services. Our role is to turn complex analysis into clear, credible evidence that shows these impacts.
For 25 years AMION has helped demonstrate the economic and social benefit of regeneration. Our place-centred approach, grounded in best practice and robust data, highlights real outcomes for local communities – new homes, jobs, thriving town centres, better services – while applying rigorous Green Book methods that we continue to shape and refine.