Dan Usher
Economics Director
Specialisms:
- Housing Need
- Real Estate
- Socio-economic Assessments
- Town Planning
Dan is a chartered member of the Royal Town Planning Institute with over 20 years’ experience, specialising in helping clients unlock the full potential of their development proposals through robust and bespoke socio-economic evidence - specialising in housing evidence.
Dan’s career spans local government, international work in Dubai, and nearly 15 years in private sector planning consultancies. During this time, he played a key role in establishing and growing a national socio-economics function at one of the UK’s largest planning consultancies. Now at Marrons, Dan is helping drive the development of a new socio-economics offering that aligns with the firm’s ambitious growth trajectory.
Dan’s core expertise includes the assessment of housing need (general, later living, student, custom/self-build, and affordable housing) at local authority, settlement, and parish level; the application of the ‘Popgroup’ demographic forecasting model to assess how development will affect the need for social infrastructure; and the preparation of evidence to support housing mix.
His work supports developers, landowners, and stakeholders across all stages of the planning process – particulating the wider social and economic benefits of development proposals.
Key areas of expertise:
– General and specialist housing need
– Demographic analysis and housing mix strategy
– Evidence-based planning support
– Expert Witness at planning appeals/EiPs
I enjoy preparing socio-economic evidence because I feel it is very powerful in supporting development proposals and can also reveal the advantages of development which will benefit the local population and have real social value. I also enjoy meeting the wide range of clients who instruct our work, and the varying types of projects which our evidence can add value to.