Augmented Planning Decisions (APD) to cut UK householder planning times

The UK Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) has launched an AI housing planning prototype called Augmented Planning Decisions (APD), developed with Google DeepMind, Google Cloud, and UK AI firm Faculty. The £8.2 million project aims to cut processing times for householder planning applications by up to 50%. In England, councils receive about 350,000 planning applications annually, and roughly 70% are householder cases (e.g., extensions, loft conversions, garden walls). That is around 245,000 applications a year, typically processed in about eight weeks. APD automates repetitive workflow steps such as data extraction, initial assessments, and documentation organization, while keeping full human oversight—planning officers retain final decision authority. Alpha trials started in May 2026 in Barnet, Camden, and Dorset. A national rollout is expected from 2027, assuming trials complete successfully through late 2026. APD builds on a prior “Extract” tool that digitized legacy planning documents; manual review taking up to two hours per document was reduced to about 40 seconds, saving roughly 255 hours of manual work per council each year. MHCLG links the effort to the UK’s housing target of 1.5 million new homes by 2029. If APD can halve times for the majority of applications, councils may redirect capacity toward larger, more complex developments.