Benefits are not identified as readily as costs by firms but can be considerable. Planners would call this the benefit of certainty. Planning clearly imposes certain costs on business in terms of the payments made and time involved in making planning applications, and in carrying this forward into permission to develop. Costs are also incurred in taking part in the plan making process, although many businesses have limited involvement. While business's main perception of the costs of planning are administrative costs such as these, they are also affected, much more widely, by planning restrictiveness.
Restrictions can operate on business both by the physical allocation and the permitted use of land.
This can, and the research suggests does, raise the costs of land and rents. It can also lead to a loss of output where business operates in sub-standard accommodation, or indeed, have difficulty in obtaining premises at all. Businesses may be conscious of these costs, but may be less conscious of the indirect impacts of restrictions on residential land which, through raising house prices, can feed through to higher wages which businesses have to pay. These are related positively to the size and attributes of an urban area, by economies of scale. Planning intervention to restrict the expansion of an area may impair the future growth of the local economy.