June 16, 2026 Responsibility & Safety

Unlocking UK house-building with AI-accelerated planning

Owen Larter and David Thacker

Conceptual 3D illustration representing housing development, featuring miniature red and blue block houses arranged along wavy paths that rise from architectural blueprints.

New UK government AI planning prototype built with Gemini aims to halve the time it takes to process homeowner applications

Around the world, Governments are exploring how AI can deliver better public services, faster. The UK is working to build 1.5 million new homes by 2029, but local planning authorities are often slowed down by dense paperwork and administrative backlogs. To help get Britain building, we’re partnering with the UK government to help radically shorten the time it takes to process householder planning applications. Our goal is to help officers cut application decision times by 50%, freeing up time for planners so that more homes can be built. We’re excited to see how our National Partnerships for AI, which seek to support reimagining of public services to create more resilient societies, can help Britain build faster.

Co-creating a new AI planning tool for faster decisions

Following the successful launch of Extract — a tool built with Gemini by the UK government's Incubator for AI (i.AI) — to help councils turn old planning documents into clear, digital data — we’re partnering to develop a sophisticated new planning prototype for councils.

Google DeepMind is working alongside the UK government, Google Cloud, Faculty, and local planning authorities in Barnet, Dorset and Camden, to co-develop an AI-powered prototype that acts as a highly skilled assistant for planning officers, handling the heavy lifting of data extraction and case analysis. Working in close partnership will enable us to build an optimized tool, suited to the unique needs and day-to-day challenges that planners contend with every day. Following early trials in Barnet, Camden and Dorset, the government plans for the new AI planning tool to be made available to all councils nationally from 2027.

For a typical new planning application, officers spend hours cross-referencing policy documents, historical files and PDFs. This manual process creates a major bottleneck. It is especially challenging given householder applications account for nearly 70% of planning applications each year. By reducing the time spent on straightforward cases like loft conversions or extensions, the prototype being tested in Barnet, Camden and Dorset could help planning officers focus more on complex applications for public benefit.

The AI planning tool will streamline routine tasks using AI, by:

Consolidating data: Pre-processing backlogs, highlighting data gaps and extracting key site information so planners can review everything on one screen.
Identifying local policies: Highlighting relevant national and local policies, pre-assessing compliance and providing exact citations for the officer to verify.
Summarizing feedback: Reviewing individual consultation letters to identify key objections or precedents.
Drafting assessments: Creating a first draft of the final report, including the rationale and proposed conditions.

Crucially, the planning officer remains in full control as the final decision-maker. They review every line the tool generates, edit the reasoning and retain the authority to approve or reject an application. To ensure accountability, the prototype records its work at every step, creating a clear chain of thought and a robust audit trail for every decision to support the planning officer.

The tool’s ability to collect relevant information, undertake a provisional assessment, and draft the foundations of a report has the potential to save significant officer time spent working on the administration of planning applications and direct this to speeding up the decision-making process for residents. In turn, this will contribute significantly to delivering our house building growth targets in the borough.

Naisha Polaine

Executive Director for Growth at Barnet Council

Scaling Extract: Turning legacy documents into usable data

The AI planning tool builds on the foundations set by Extract — which was made available to every council in England earlier this month. Extract solves a common problem: critical planning information is often locked away in unstructured PDFs. Extract is able to turn hundreds of pages of legacy planning documents into usable data in minutes.

Extract has already shown great success in trials across more than 20 local planning authorities — and is expected to save the average council around 255 hours of manual work a year.

A planning tool for everyone

Our goal is to create a more responsive and transparent planning tool that benefits everyone. By reducing the administrative burden on officers, we can accelerate the economic activity that comes with building and help more people improve their homes.

As we move forward, we will continue to work together to ensure these tools help meet the evolving needs of the UK's planning ecosystem. We hope these developments will serve as a model for other governments around the world as they look to navigate the future of public service delivery.