Methodology
How CommercialInstinct reasons
Ability to pursue ≠ proof of net public value
That a council could pursue an opportunity — because demand, capacity or a plausible power exists — says nothing about whether it should. Proof of net public value requires evidenced baselines, full costs, lawful authority from researched sources, impacts on residents and equality, Best Value and prudent finance. Commercial activity here is not profit-maximisation; statutory duties and public service quality come first.
Four exploration lenses
Non-hierarchical. They can coexist; not every opportunity needs all four. Legal, policy, strategic and public-value constraints apply to every lens — they are not a fifth lens.
- Transactions & Income
- Fees, charges, leases, lettings, licences, invoicing, arrears, billing, contractual income, pricing and cost recovery.
- Services & Operations
- Operating models, staffing, commissioning, service demand, capacity, procurement and contract performance.
- Council-wide Resources
- Corporate expenditure, duplication, shared services, assets, systems and cross-department savings.
- Markets & Partnerships
- Commercial demand, suppliers, partnerships, neighbouring authorities, businesses and external funding.
Return paths are labels, not thresholds
- Realise Now — Typically 0–6 months
- Develop & Deliver — Typically 6–24 months
- Invest & Prove — Investment-backed, variable timing
Every record stores time-to-first-benefit and upfront investment independently, plus cashability and confidence. A fast-paying investment and a slow no-cost change are both represented correctly.
Financial categories are never combined
- Income:
- New or recovered money received by the council.
- Cost reduction:
- A reduction in an existing budgeted cost that can be removed from the budget.
- Cost avoidance:
- Prevents a future cost rising; does not release existing budget.
- Capital receipt:
- One-off proceeds; usage is restricted and not a recurring saving.
- Non-cashable capacity:
- Time or capacity freed; only cashable if a budget is actually removed.
Potential (unvalidated), finance-validated forecast and realised figures are separate tiers. The product never sums them, or different categories, into one total.
Deterministic rules
- Net annual benefit = gross annual benefit − additional annual costs.
- First-year estimate = net × (12 − start month) ÷ 12, floored at zero months.
- Simple payback = initial investment ÷ net annual benefit, only when both are positive.
- Probability-weighted view = net × implementation probability (risk view, not a forecast).
- Only income and cost reduction are treated as potentially cashable; everything else is flagged.
- An opportunity is hidden when its primary service is provisionally "not typical" for the selected council type.
Stage gates
1. Identified
Hypothesis recorded with rationale.
2. Under assessment
Evidence, powers and impacts being researched.
3. Approved
Finance-validated forecast and governance decision.
4. Realised
Benefit measured against baseline.
England and Wales
England has two-tier areas (district and county councils) plus unitary, metropolitan and London borough councils; Wales has principal councils. Service responsibilities and legal frameworks differ, and Wales-specific duties appear as separate placeholder checks. The product never assumes charging or trading powers, or statutory permission, without a researched source. The interface is English only; text is centralised so Welsh-language support could be added later — full bilingual support is not claimed.
Future seams
Typed models and seed data are separate from the interface, ready for a durable evidence corpus, a source-backed rules engine, unit tests and permissioned data ingestion. No council data is collected in this prototype; all data stays in your browser.