Planning Application Assistant
The Planning Application Assistant prepares the descriptive parts of an officer's report so that planning officers spend their time on assessment rather than transcription.
Keywords
- Tags: Document drafting
- Tags: Planning
- Tags: Efficiency
- Tags: Large language model
- Stage: Pilot
- Type: Large Language Model
- Sector: Planning and environment
- Language: English
How does our product work?
The assistant reads the submitted application, the site history and the relevant policies from the local development plan. It produces a draft covering the site description, the proposal, the planning history and the policies that apply.
It is instructed not to express a view on whether permission should be granted, and the sections where an officer must form a judgement are left deliberately blank.
Overview
A typical officer's report is roughly two thirds factual description and one third assessment. The descriptive part is largely a matter of finding and restating information that is already on file.
By drafting that part, the assistant returns officer time to the assessment, which is the part only a qualified person can do. Reports are published in full, and are the officer's report, not the system's.
Owner and responsibility
More detailed information on the system
Here you can get acquainted with the information used by the system, the operating logic, and its governance in the areas that interest you.
System description
Every statement in a draft carries a citation to the document and page it came from, so the officer can verify it without rereading the file. Uncited statements are treated as defects and are reported by officers during the pilot.
The model runs in our own tenancy. No application content is used to train the underlying model, and no content is retained by the model provider.
Known limitations
The assistant is unreliable on applications with long or contested planning histories, where the relevant precedent may sit in correspondence rather than in a formal decision. These are excluded from the pilot.
It does not read plans or elevations. Drawing interpretation remains entirely with the officer.
References
Pilot terms of reference and the officer feedback log.