The PropTech Innovation Fund is MHCLG’s flagship programme to support testing and scaling of digital innovation across the planning and housebuilding process. The fund provides an opportunity for UK-based property technology (PropTech) companies, local and combined authorities, private sector, and third sector organisations to collaboratively leverage PropTech to tackle some of the biggest challenges in planning and housebuilding.
Round 6 - which is being co-delivered by MHCLG’s Digital Planning Programme and PUBLIC - represents an exciting evolution in the fund’s ambition and design, with a total of £2.4 million of grant funding available.
While previous rounds have focused on testing and validating early-stage solutions, this round is explicitly focused on scaling proven innovation in planning and housing delivery alongside existing government-wide projects by enabling stronger collaboration and building sustainable public-private partnerships.
Supporting this focus on scalability, this is also the first round to require all applications to come from consortia of at least one PropTech company and a minimum of 2 local planning and combined authorities (LPAs). This will ensure solutions are designed and tested in real planning environments from the outset, setting up solutions for sustainable adoption and scale.
Round 6 has seen a record level of LPA engagement, with over 70 LPAs submitting applications as part of a diverse range of consortia - two thirds focused on strengthening evidence base across plan-making boundaries and tiers, and one third on improving Section 106 and viability processes. This ‘matchmaking’ of PropTech companies and LPAs was actively supported by MHCLG and PUBLIC in the run-up to the submission deadline, including an in-person Matchmaking Event which brought together 100+ interested applicants to connect with potential partners. In addition, this round has confirmed a total of £500k+ in match funding committed from finalists, highlighting the high level of commitment from pilots to sustained investment.
The eleven selected consortia represent a diverse range of PropTech companies, LPAs, housing developers and academic institutions. Their solutions set out to create interoperable platforms tailored to LPA’s existing data environments that help to improve evidence base across boundaries and tiers of plan-making, or in Section 106 negotiations – the biggest blockers in UK’s housing delivery.
Applications for Round 6 were submitted against two challenge statements:
You can find out how we developed these challenges in our Discovery Report.
Each consortium will now enter an 8-month pilot phase, working directly with local authority partners to test, refine, and scale their solutions in live planning environments.
The successful consortia are:
The following partnerships are developing AI-powered platforms to streamline S106 negotiations, agreement drafting and obligation management:
The specific design of Round 6 and the selected pilots align closely with the UK Government’s wider priorities to increase housing supply, modernise the planning system, and improve capacity across LPAs.
As LPAs continue to face increasing demand and complexity, digital tools are playing an increasingly important role in supporting faster decision-making, improving data quality, and reducing friction in the planning and housebuilding process.
Since 2021, MHCLG’s Digital Planning Programme has funded 100+ PropTech pilots across various stages of planning and housing delivery. Across these pilots, PropTech tools (e.g., 3D modelling, AI analysis for consultations, viability modelling) have enabled significant efficiencies across local authority planning processes. Yet, PUBLIC’s engagement with public and private sectors revealed several systemic barriers limiting PropTech’s wider uptake, including difficulties in consolidating an evidence base from multiple stakeholders and tiers, internal co-ordination failures and skills gaps in data and digital skills, data fragmentation of crucial planning information across siloed bodies, lack of pipeline visibility of national housing and infrastructure, and lack of scenario modelling and viability data.
By investing specifically in proven tools being built by public-private consortia across our two bespoke challenge areas, the PropTech Innovation Fund is helping to tackle these systemic barriers to planning and housebuilding through enabling the adoption, embedding and scaling of innovative PropTech solutions - ultimately supporting the planning system to deliver 1.5 million homes in this Parliament.
While the selection of the eleven finalists is an exciting moment, this is just the beginning for Round 6. Over the coming months, the successful consortia will be working hard to get their pilots up and running, backed by active mentorship and support from MHCLG, PUBLIC and a wider network of experts.
PUBLIC will be sharing updates on the pilots and the impact they’ll be having on live planning environments up and down the country - including hosting a number of show-and-tells and networking sessions to engage with other stakeholders in the wider planning sector. If you’re interested in getting involved in these, you can follow PUBLIC and Digital Planning UK Gov Linkedins for regular updates or reach out to the team directly at proptechfundr6@public.io!
Round 6 will conclude with a showcase of the completed pilots in early 2027, where we’ll spotlight the results, share insights and lessons learned, and set out a course for scalable models which can continue to deliver faster, fairer and more effective housing delivery across the UK.
If you want to learn more about Round 6 of the PropTech Innovation Fund, please reach out to the team at proptechfundr6@public.io.
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