Why it matters: The test puts generative AI inside a government approval process, and the UK government says it intends to offer the tool to every council in England by the end of 2027, subject to testing.
Google DeepMind says its AI planning tool, PlanAssist, will be made available to an additional 12 local planning authorities across England, bringing the number of councils involved to 15. The UK government said in a press release dated Oct 30 that the tool will be tested across the 15 councils for 12 months.
What the tool does: PlanAssist is built with Gemini and was developed by Google DeepMind with the UK government, Google Cloud and Faculty, according to DeepMind's post. It checks that application documents and drawings are complete, compares applications against constraints such as tree preservation orders and against local and national planning policy, flags issues raised earlier, such as objections from residents, and drafts cited reports that planning staff can edit. DeepMind and the government both say council planning staff keep the final decision on every application.
Pilot results: in early testing at Barnet, Camden and Dorset councils, DeepMind says the tool cut the average time planning staff spent on householder assessment tasks by 58%, and that more than 70% of the reports it generated were approved by planning staff with no edits. The government release says the change helped halve processing times for routine householder applications from eight weeks to four. These are the organizations' own reported results, not an independent evaluation.
What comes next: DeepMind says PlanAssist is moving into a 12-month beta phase on real, incoming applications, starting with a subset of councils, with the 12 new councils joining in three groups. The government release names them as Ashford, Lambeth, Newcastle, Nottingham, Bristol, Cumberland, North Lincolnshire, Rochdale, Redbridge, South Gloucestershire, Stoke-on-Trent and Westminster. The government says use of the tool will not be mandatory and that it intends to make PlanAssist available to every council in England by the end of 2027.
Sources
- Google DeepMind: "Speeding up planning decisions with AI," Oct 31, 2026
- UK government (Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government): "Faster planning decisions as new rules and AI tackle delays," Oct 30, 2026
How we checked this: We read Google DeepMind's Oct 31, 2026 blog post and the UK Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government press release dated Oct 30, 2026 on the UK government website, in copies saved on Oct 31, 2026 at 5:01 PM ET and again on Nov 1, 2026 at about 8 AM ET, and checked every figure, date and council name against them.
See something wrong? Tell us and we'll fix it. Every fix is dated and listed on our Corrections page.