Regeneration & funding bids
Dated high-street baselines for Towns Fund and regeneration bids
Regeneration bids need a clear "before." Wayback Walk gives you dated Street View captures of the same high-street spot years apart — with political and economic context for that exact window — so the baseline is inspectable, not anecdotal. Free to explore; method attached.
Evidence layers for the bid document
- A share link to the comparison — the funder or assessor opens it and sees the same pin, same angle, honest dates. No need to take your word for it.
- Exact capture window — "2009-06 to 2024-09, across 15 years" is verifiable. "The high street has declined over the past decade" is not.
- Political and council context — who governed nationally, at devolved level and locally during the comparison window. Context for the bid narrative, sourced from Open Council Data UK.
- ONS retail premises trend — UK Business Counts (SIC 47) for the local authority, from 2010 onwards. The closest official measure to "shops on the ground" — authority-wide, not street-level.
- Companies House composition — Companies House snapshot for the postcode district: retail, hair & beauty, vape-adjacent. Survivorship-biased but directional.
- Live shop inventory — OpenStreetMap counts near the pin. Today's mix of retail, food, services — what's actually there now.
- Method note — states what the comparison can and cannot show. Attached to every commissioned pack; permanently available on the method page.
Where it fits in a regeneration or Towns Fund bid
Evidence annex — the visual baseline
A screenshot or share link in the evidence annex that any assessor can re-open. Exact dates printed in the comparison; no ambiguity about what changed over what period. Useful for Towns Fund and Long-Term Plan for Towns applications that require visual evidence of need.
Narrative support — sourced lines for the written case
The politics, ONS and Companies House layers give you sourced lines for the narrative — "retail premises in [authority] fell from X to Y between 2010 and 2024 (ONS UK Business Counts, via Nomis)" — without a separate data pull. Each line cites its source in the app and on the method page.
Multi-street for a town-wide bid
Towns Fund and Long-Term Plan for Towns bids typically cover more than one street. A multi-street pack gives you three to five pins for the same place, same method, same deliverable — each with its own fact sheet and share link.
Public-facing engagement
Share links are public URLs that work on any device. Include them in community engagement documents or consultation portals so residents can explore the comparison and see why the bid is being made.
Not a replacement for economic appraisal
Wayback Walk is an evidence aid, not an economic appraisal or impact assessment. It does not replace footfall surveys, vacancy audits, cost–benefit analyses or any indicator that requires professional fieldwork or modelling.
What it does: shows what two Street View captures show, in that window, with sourced context — and stops there. Colour differences between old and new frames are camera artefacts (different hardware, compression, season), not evidence of decline. The method page explains why. The tool takes no political side.
Common questions
What baseline evidence do regeneration bids need?
Can I use Street View comparisons in a funding application?
Does Wayback Walk cover the whole UK?
Use it now — free to explore
The app is free — find the street, scrub the archive, share the link. No login, no installation. If you need a verified comparison delivered to deadline for a bid document — with a fact sheet and method note ready to paste — commission a pack.
On a bid deadline?
If you're writing the evidence base for a Towns Fund, Long-Term Plan for Towns or regeneration bid and need a checked, dated comparison delivered to your timeline — share link, fact sheet, method note — use the commission form.