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The UK government has just announced something planning officers have been waiting years to hear: a £10 million procurement for AI-augmented planning decisions. At Planda, we've been building AI for UK planning validation for years. This government investment validates exactly what we've been focused on: using technology to remove the manual work that keeps planning officers from doing actual planning.
Working with councils, we examined detailed validation data showing 1,087 specific reasons applications were marked invalid. The pattern that emerged reveals the true complexity of validation work.
Validation requirements are technical, granular, and vary significantly across jurisdictions. Even professional agents and experienced applicants can struggle to meet all requirements correctly on every submission. When applications arrive invalid, the operational impact cascades: officer capacity is redirected to administrative follow-up, applicants experience delays, and departmental backlogs compound.
The majority of invalidity stems from mechanical verification issues. Missing location plans, incorrect fees, incomplete ownership certificates, outdated application forms, and absent scale bars. These are systematic checks that can be automated, freeing officers to focus their professional expertise where it adds most value: assessing planning merit, applying policy frameworks, engaging with stakeholders, and contributing to strategic place-shaping.
This creates a clear opportunity for AI intervention. Automated validation can perform manual verification instantly and consistently, enabling officers to allocate their time to work that requires professional planning judgment.
Planda has maintained exclusive focus on UK planning validation since our founding. Our technology is built on analysis of millions of UK planning applications. We have established technical partnerships with Idox, the leading provider of back office planning software to UK councils, and Groundsure, who are the leading supplier of planning data and environmental intelligence across the conveyancing sector.
These partnerships enable direct integration of validation capabilities into existing workflows. Officers should not require new platforms or parallel systems. AI validation must operate within the environments where planning work actually occurs.
This principle underpins Ava, our AI validation assistant, which operates within Idox Uniform and Idox Cloud. The system analyses application documents against national and local validation requirements, identifies issues systematically, and facilitates communication with applicants regarding necessary corrections, all within existing planning system interfaces.
The government procurement represents a significant commitment to AI planning infrastructure. This investment will establish standards, enable sector-wide learning, and support the development of solutions at scale.
More importantly, it signals a fundamental shift in how planning capacity is understood. For decades, the answer to validation backlogs has been "hire more officers" or "improve guidance for applicants." This procurement acknowledges a different reality: the work itself needs to change.
This matters beyond individual council efficiency. When validation work consumes officer capacity systematically across 317 local planning authorities, it constrains the profession's ability to engage meaningfully with strategic planning challenges: housing delivery, climate adaptation, place-making, and community engagement. The investment recognises that freeing officer capacity from administrative work is infrastructure investment in planning capability itself.
For planning officers and local authorities exploring how AI validation can address operational needs - Contact us to discuss your authority's specific challenges here
