Many MindedPlanAssist AI tool expands to 12 more English councils after pilot
Google DeepMind has announced that PlanAssist, an AI tool for council planning officers, will be offered to 12 more local planning authorities in England. It enters a 12-month Beta phase on live applications, starting with a subset of councils. The other councils join in three cohorts, for a total of 15.
The expansion follows pilots that began in June in Barnet, Camden and Dorset. DeepMind reports that average officer time on householder assessment tasks fell by 58%, and that more than 70% of the reports the tool generated were approved by officers with no edits. PlanAssist was built with the UK government, Google Cloud and Faculty, on Gemini. It checks that application documents and drawings are complete. It tests applications against heritage constraints such as tree preservation orders, and against local and national policy. It also looks for earlier issues or objections, including those from residents, and drafts fully cited reports that officers can edit.
This matters for shelter because routine householder applications can take up as much as 70% of planning officers' workloads. If those checks get faster, officers have more time for the harder cases, and approvals move quicker. The UK government has a goal of 1.5 million new homes by 2029, and slow permitting is one of the frictions standing between that goal and the building. Shorter waits lower holding costs and uncertainty, which can eventually reach what housing costs.
The caveats are real. The results come from early pilots in three councils, and the figures are reported by DeepMind, the developer, and not independently verified. The 58% is an average for householder assessment tasks, not for planning overall. Officers keep the final decision on every application. Watch whether Beta results on live applications hold up, and whether faster processing shows up in decision times and homes built.
Source: Google DeepMind