DeepMind's PlanAssist moves to 12 more English councils

Google DeepMind has said that PlanAssist, its AI tool for planning departments, is going beyond the first pilot councils. The tool is built with Gemini and developed with the UK government, Google Cloud and Faculty. It will be offered to another 12 local planning authorities in England, bringing the total to 15.

What the pilot showed

PlanAssist was piloted from June in Barnet, Camden and Dorset. Across those councils, the average time an officer spent on householder assessment tasks fell by 58%. More than 70% of the reports the tool generated were approved by officers with no edits. Those reports covered points such as whether an application meets local planning rules and whether all required documents were submitted.

The case for the tool is workload. According to DeepMind, routine householder applications make up as much as 70% of planning officers' work, even though they are often simple to approve.

What the tool does

The workflow has four steps:

• It validates the application documents and architectural drawings to confirm the required information is present. It measures the proposal against conservation limits like tree protection orders, as well as against regional and national land-use guidelines.
• It looks for issues or objections already raised, for example by local residents.
• It drafts a fully cited report that the planning officer can edit before reaching a decision.

What happens next

PlanAssist now enters a 12-month Beta using live applications, starting with a subset of councils. The 12 additional councils will join in three cohorts. The group includes metropolitan and rural districts, which lets the team test the tool across different kinds of communities. If testing goes well, the government plans to make it available to every council in England in 2027. That plan is conditional; the source does not confirm it as a commitment.

Every assessment will still be reviewed and approved by a qualified planning officer before a decision is made. The announcement ties the effort to the government's goal of building 1.5 million homes by 2029, and notes that delays hit individual applicants too, with months of waiting for projects like a loft conversion or an extension.

Why it is worth watching

The figures come from an early pilot published by the vendor, not from an independent evaluation. The Beta on live applications is the first test of whether the time saving and the high share of unedited reports hold up across a wider and more varied set of councils. For operators, the useful signal is the design: automated completeness checks, rule matching and cited drafting, with a named human owning the final call.