Google to help decide UK planning applications
Key Points
- Google Cloud has won an £8.3mn contract to build an AI tool that will recommend approve or reject decisions on UK planning applications
- The Augmented Planning Decision Tool targets householder cases first, aiming to cut decision times from eight weeks to four
- Human planning officers retain final sign-off on all decisions
- The tool also helps councils manage a rise in AI-generated objection letters flooding the system
- Experts from the Royal Town Planning Institute and Lichfields have raised concerns about public trust, professional discretion and training data bias
Google has won an £8.3 million government contract to build an AI system that will recommend whether to approve or reject planning applications across England, with the first council pilots launching this month.
The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government selected Google Cloud ahead of four competing firms, including AtkinsRéalis and PA Consulting, following a two-week prototype competition.
The Augmented Planning Decision Tool will analyse planning documents, check policy compliance, and draft reasoned recommendations for council officers to review and sign off. A human officer will still make every final decision.
What the tool does
The system targets householder applications first, covering extensions, loft conversions and other alterations to existing homes.
These make up around 69% of all planning applications submitted each year in England and consume a disproportionate share of planning officer time.
The government wants AI to absorb the analytical and administrative burden on these cases, cutting average decision times from more than eight weeks to around four. The long-term ambition is near-instant decisions for straightforward applications.
James Murray, Chief Secretary to the Treasury and the minister leading the government’s AI efficiency drive, told the Financial Times that the biggest gains would come from redesigning processes end-to-end so that services require less time from both the user and the service provider.
The tool also tackles a growing complication in the planning system.
Some councils report a rise in AI-generated objection letters, highly detailed machine-written submissions that add to already stretched workloads.
The Augmented Planning Decision Tool can help officers identify and process these submissions more efficiently, reducing the administrative drag they create on the wider system.
Some critics have warned that efficiency gains must not come at the cost of professional judgment.
Daniel Slade, Head of Research at the Royal Town Planning Institute, said AI cannot substitute the expert discretion of qualified planners and cautioned that redesigning planning systems around what machines process well, rather than what produces good outcomes, would undermine the reform entirely.
He also warned that greater AI involvement could deter public participation in the planning process.
The bigger picture
The Augmented Planning Decision Tool forms part of a broader government digitisation programme.
A companion system called Extract, also built using Google’s Gemini model, converts decades of handwritten planning documents and maps into searchable digital data in around two minutes.
The same task takes a planning officer between one and two hours manually.
The government aims to digitise all planning documents across English councils by the end of 2026.
Both tools support the government’s target of building 1.5 million homes over this parliament, a goal under pressure from a planning system the government describes as broken.
Planning approvals for new homes hit a record low in the second quarter of 2025, with just 7,000 housing applications granted between April and June of that year.
