PlanAssist council trials are expanding to 15 local authorities in England after a government announcement on 30 October 2026. Twelve councils are joining the first three participants, with officers testing whether the technology can help them assess routine planning applications more efficiently.
The enlarged trial follows initial work with Camden, Barnet and Dorset. Ministers say early testing reduced the time spent on selected planning tasks by 58%, but that is a measure of individual tasks rather than independently verified end-to-end decision times across all participating councils.
This development arrives alongside England’s national planning delegation rules, which take effect on 31 October 2026. The two changes are related to the government’s ambitions for faster decisions, but they are distinct: one tests an optional digital tool, while the other alters who can determine certain applications.
Which councils are joining the PlanAssist council trials?
The twelve additional authorities are Ashford Borough Council, the London Borough of Lambeth, Newcastle City Council, Nottingham City Council, Bristol City Council and Cumberland Council. The other six are North Lincolnshire Council, Rochdale Borough Council, the London Borough of Redbridge, South Gloucestershire Council, Stoke-on-Trent City Council and Westminster City Council. The government says these additions bring the overall group to fifteen.
The PlanAssist council trials will now run across a wider variety of English planning departments for a further twelve months. A larger test group is worthwhile because the demands on an urban borough are not identical to those on a rural or mixed authority. What works well with one council’s records, policies and validation procedures must also work reliably with another’s.
There is no requirement for every council to adopt the product. The government’s announcement says PlanAssist will not be mandated, although ministers intend to make it available nationally by the end of 2027. Availability, take-up and measurable improvements are different outcomes, and it would be premature to treat that intended rollout as a completed change.
What does the reported 58% reduction actually measure?
The headline figure is a 58% reduction in time spent on key planning tasks during early testing. That may be encouraging, but it does not establish a 58% fall in the total time required to determine an application. Consultation responses, amendments, legal agreements and decision-making still affect the overall timetable, often in ways that better document processing alone cannot resolve.
The government’s press release refers to a possible reduction in routine householder application processing from around eight weeks to four. I would treat this as an ambition informed by the pilot, not a proven four-week service standard. The PlanAssist council trials need published, comparable results on full application lifecycles before applicants can make firm assumptions about how quickly a decision will arrive.
PlanAssist is intended to bring application information, local policies and site constraints together, producing an evidence-backed initial assessment for officers to examine. It has been developed with Google DeepMind, Google Cloud, Faculty and participating authorities. Crucially, planning officers remain responsible for considering the material and reaching the actual decisions.
The practical test for planning officers and applicants
A planning officer needs to know not merely what an automated summary concludes, but which adopted policy, mapping layer, application drawing or consultation response supports it. A missing conservation-area designation, stale local-plan policy or misunderstood use class could create more work rather than less. Effective PlanAssist council trials should therefore measure accuracy and traceability alongside speed.
For applicants, the potential benefit is faster identification of missing information, inconsistencies and relevant constraints. For objectors and neighbours, the important safeguard is that the officer still weighs planning considerations and explains the decision. Software cannot make an otherwise unacceptable proposal acceptable, and a shorter assessment should not mean a thinner or less defensible reasoning process.
The government also plans to require councils to digitise and publish key planning documents as open data by the end of 2027. That matters beyond one supplier’s software. Accessible, reliable source data can support a range of planning services, but it will require sustained attention to version control, local policy changes and clear public access.
How this differs from the new delegation rules
The same announcement highlights the national scheme of delegation taking effect across relevant planning authorities in England on 31 October 2026. That is a legal change to the allocation of decision-making responsibility, not a feature of PlanAssist. Our guide to the National Scheme of Delegation sets out which applications must be handled by officers and when a committee referral may remain possible.
Under the new arrangements, Schedule 1 includes many householder, minor residential and minor commercial applications that must normally be determined by officers. Schedule 2 applications are also generally officer decisions unless the prescribed gateway criteria are satisfied and the nominated member and officer agree referral. There are distinct rules for applications where the authority or its members or officers have an interest.
It would be misleading to credit every future improvement in planning times to the PlanAssist council trials. A reduction in committee referrals, additional recruitment, clearer submission requirements and improved digital records could all influence performance. Equally, councils must continue to apply their development plans and statutory duties irrespective of which tool is used to organise the evidence.
What has already been announced?
This is a new testing stage, not the first announcement about artificial intelligence in planning. In June 2026, ministers described the initial prototype trials in Camden, Barnet and Dorset. The October Budget’s planning AI commitment subsequently set out the intention to extend availability by 2027. The substantive new point on 30 October is that twelve further authorities have now been named for the expanded trial.
The government’s 30 October release also reports 420 planners recruited through its supported schemes, against an earlier manifesto commitment of 300. That is a separate staffing measure. Recruitment numbers do not by themselves show the resulting capacity of each council, and local planning performance should still be assessed through casework data rather than national recruitment headlines.
Housing Secretary Angela Rayner said the government was giving councils “the people, tools and reforms they need to get applications moving faster”. The quote comes from the official 30 October press release. Her statement expresses the policy objective; the next stage is to establish how consistently the technology delivers in day-to-day casework.
What should be measured over the next year?
The strongest evidence from the PlanAssist council trials would compare like-for-like applications before and during use, explain how time savings were measured, record any errors or manual corrections, and distinguish simple householder cases from complex proposals. Publication of those findings would help councils, consultants and the public judge whether faster preliminary assessment translates into better outcomes.
It will also be important to see how the twelve new councils integrate the system with existing workflows and what happens when input documents are incomplete or contradictory. There is a clear productivity opportunity here, but the relevant question is not whether an AI summary appears quickly. It is whether a properly evidenced planning decision can be delivered sooner without sacrificing accuracy or accountability.
For now, the PlanAssist council trials represent a significant expansion of a live experiment rather than the national deployment of a proven replacement for officer judgement. Practitioners can continue to rely on the usual planning application processes, while watching for published trial methodology, measured turnaround times and further government guidance.
Official sources
The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government announcement of 30 October 2026 provides the participating councils and trial figures. The statutory guidance on planning committees explains the separate delegation framework applying from 31 October 2026.
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