What benefit would people gain from the reports? Average rate of success/time is interesting, but I'm not sure what you'd do with this information other than a bit of local press discourse. I suppose it's nicely timed for the council elections?

Honest answer... I don't fully know, zero paying customers so it's still very much a hypothesis. The two use cases I think hold up: (1) people pre-buying a house with extension potential, who otherwise guess or pay £500+ for a planning consultant; (2) homeowners about to commission £2-5k of architect drawings who want a sanity check before proceeding. Someone else suggested £100-500 for a proper pre-submission review which is probably better for that second case than my £19 report. The "general state-of-area" framing is the weakest one and you're right it's mostly local press discourse — that's marketing not revenue.