In our last blog, we highlighted the issues surrounding the Planning Portal’s recent data release - showing how submission-only figures risk misrepresenting true planning activity across England and Wales. In this blog, the focus shifts to a deeper question: what kind of digital infrastructure should underpin the future of UK planning?
The Government’s latest moves suggest that the answer is clear - one that is open, collaborative, and genuinely innovative, not one that profits from systemic strain.
The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC), in collaboration with the Government Digital Service (GDS), is now publicly developing a new planning applications data standard.
This work, led through the Planning Data Design project and openly discussed on GitHub, represents a fundamental shift in how planning information will be shared and managed.
The process is transparent and inclusive. Importantly, it is not being conducted privately with Planning Portal. Instead, the Government is engaging directly with local authorities, developers, and technology providers to create a shared standard for the benefit of the entire sector.
This is a deliberate choice. It signals an intention to move away from reliance on single, commercially-driven intermediaries that have, for years, operated as the primary gate through which all planning applications must pass.
As government tenders such as the recent AI-Augmented Planning Decisions procurement have made clear, the policy direction is one of structural diversification, encouraging competition and innovation where monopoly once existed. Over the next year, we fully expect to see Planning Portal’s dominant position dismantled and distributed, as councils and suppliers adopt new, interoperable systems that make centralised control redundant.
Planning Portal has, for too long, capitalised on the pressures faced by both local authorities and applicants. Its business model is structured around charging consumers to submit applications, and charging councils to handle them, monetising the very inefficiencies the planning system is struggling to overcome.
Rather than investing in automation or technology that reduces workloads and accelerates outcomes, the company’s most recent “innovations” have focused on selling human validation officers back to the public sector at premium rates.
In effect, local authorities - already under extraordinary resource constraints - are asked to buy back their own capacity, while the Portal continues to grow its revenues from a process it has done little to modernise.
This is not sustainable. It does not represent digital transformation, and it certainly does not serve the public interest.
The Government’s new data standard offers an alternative vision, one built on interoperability, transparency, and innovation. When planning data is structured consistently and shared openly, councils can work more efficiently, software providers can integrate seamlessly, and citizens benefit from faster, fairer decision-making.
At Planda, we are fully aligned with this direction. Our AI-driven validation platform, AVA, is designed to remove manual administrative burden, reduce error rates, and free officers to focus on decision-making rather than data entry.
Where others see an opportunity to profit from the problem, we see an opportunity to solve it.
As open standards begin to reshape the planning technology landscape, the industry will face a choice: continue to extract value from inefficiency, or invest in tools that truly alleviate it.
For us, the decision is simple. We are building the systems that will define the next decade of planning - automated, transparent, and aligned with public value.
Within the next year or so, the planning sector will see the unbundling of legacy services that have held it back for decades. The monopoly model will give way to an ecosystem built on openness and collaboration and the beneficiaries will be councils, communities, and the public interest.
The era of planning platforms profiting from pressure is ending. The era of intelligent, data-driven collaboration has begun.
Want to learn more? Contact us for further information into planning activity analysis for your region.
