An AI tool that will ‘slash planning delays’ has been officially unveiled by Prime Minister Keir Starmer at London Tech Week, after a trial of the software was announced in April.
Extract, which is expected to be made available to all councils by Spring 2026, will process up to 100 planning records a day, freeing up thousands of hours for planning officers and bringing ‘England’s outdated planning system into the 21st century’. The tool, which uses Google DeepMind’s Gemini model, has been tested in Hillingdon, Nuneaton & Bedworth and Exeter councils, where it digitised each planning record in around three minutes.
The prime minister said of the ‘AI breakthrough’:
“For too long, our outdated planning system has held back our country— slowing down the development of vital infrastructure and making it harder to get the homes we need built.
“This government is working hand in hand with business to change that. With Extract, we’re harnessing the power of AI to help planning officers cut red tape, speed up decisions, and unlock the new homes for hard-working people as part of our Plan for Change.”
Deputy PM Angela Rayner added:
“By using cutting-edge technology like Extract we can fix the broken planning system, cut delays, save money, and also reduce burdens on councils to help pave the way for the biggest building boom in a generation.”
Around 350,000 planning applications are submitted every year in England, in a system heavily reliant on paper documents – some of which run into hundreds of pages. Handing over the process to AI, the government says, will reduce the planning delays that ‘plague the system’ and ‘accelerate the delivery of much-needed housing’:
“For the first time, this cutting-edge technology will help councils convert decades-old, handwritten planning documents and maps into data in minutes – and will power new types of planning software to slash the 250,000 estimated hours spent by planning officers each year manually checking these documents. This will dramatically reduce delays that have long plagued the system.
“This represents a step-change in productivity, freeing up thousands of hours for planning officers to focus on decision-making to speed up housebuilding. It will also accelerate the delivery of much-needed housing, improve reliability in the planning process and reduce costs and save time for councils and developers.”
Tom Shardlow is CEO of Nuneaton and Bedworth Borough Council, which took part in the trial. He said:
“Just like many local authorities, Nuneaton and Bedworth Borough Council has many plans and documents in storage from historic planning applications over the years. Working with the Extract team, we have seen the outputs from Extract, and how these could improve our service, providing high quality, digital, GeoSpatial data and how this could speed up the process for our Planning Team.”
The government is now working with Google to develop and expand Extract to all local authorities in England. The planning data gathered using the tool will be uploaded to a publicly accessible gov.uk service page.
