A planning approval is a lead only when it has a date.
Planning approvals are the best-known public signal of future spending, and the most over-sold. Here is how to tell the ones that mean an order from the ones that mean nothing yet.
Why approvals disappoint
An approval says a project may go ahead. It does not say it will, or when. Many approved projects wait years for finance, a grid connection or a buyer, and some never start.
That is why suppliers who buy lists of approvals often give up on them: most of the list is too early, and there is no way to tell which few are about to move.
What turns an approval into a lead
A second, dated commitment. For an energy project, a firm connection date or a capacity agreement. For an industrial site, the operating permit that lets it run. For a fleet depot, the licence for the vehicles that will use it.
When an approval and a dated commitment meet at the same site, the project has crossed from possible to scheduled. That is the moment suppliers are chosen.
Changes that never need planning
Many of the best leads involve no building at all. A site that is allowed to process a third more in the same buildings, a fleet that adds vehicles at an existing yard, a works that must meet a tighter limit. None of them goes near planning, so none of them appears in construction databases.
For a supplier of equipment rather than buildings, these are often the majority of the work worth having.
What to join it with
The company behind the application, which is often not the name on it. Its accounts, to see whether the project is affordable. Its registered charges, to see whether it has been financed. Its other sites, to see whether it will be back.
An approval joined to those four is a conversation. On its own, it is a line in a spreadsheet.
Signals like these, written up for your trade