Claire Day
Helping people achieve better built environment planning outcomes first time, using AI to identify issues and strengthen applications before submission.
Project
Hyvia Limited
URL
Year founded
2025
Business stage
Seed
High-growth sectors
Digital and Technologies
Sector
Digital
Location
East Midlands
Funding
Funded Award Winner
The problem and opportunity
The planning system is slow, uncertain and expensive. Applicants wait months for decisions, refusal rates remain high, and issues often emerge too late, after time and money have been spent. Lower-value applications, such as home extensions, are particularly underserved, while local authorities are overstretched. Hyvia brings intelligence to the front of the process, identifying issues early so applications are stronger before they are submitted.
The solution and innovation
Hyvia is a decision-intelligence platform for planning. It assesses proposals against local policy, precedent and site data to predict the likelihood of approval and flag issues that could cause refusals before submission. The technology keeps a person in the loop throughout, supporting professional judgement rather than replacing it, in line with RICS & RTPI standards. Early work with real applications shows it can reduce delays, refusals and wasted effort.
Market and ambition
Hyvia is launching in the UK planning market through its existing base of homeowner and consultancy clients, targeting £1m revenue in year one. Over three years, we plan to scale across homeowners, developers and consultancies to become the trusted decision-intelligence layer supporting the wider planning system.
Founder perspective
Claire has over 25 years’ planning experience and built a multi-award-winning consultancy. She founded Hyvia after seeing how complexity can delay applications and make outcomes harder for ordinary people to secure. She is passionate about using technology to widen access to planning and scale expertise industry-wide.
Women in Innovation Award
Recipient of the Innovate UK Women in Innovation Award 2025/26, receiving tailored business support, and access to specialist training and networks. View all winners and highly commended applicants from the Women in Innovation cohort 2025/2026.