Your Councillor Can No Longer Call In the Extension Next Door. In 15 Councils, an AI Now Drafts the First Assessment of It.
Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
In short. Since Saturday 31 October 2026, national regulations require every householder application in England to be decided by a council officer [1]. Councillors have no power under the regulations to refer one to a planning committee, however contested it is locally [1]. In the same announcement, the government expanded PlanAssist, an AI tool that gives officers "an evidence-backed initial assessment" of those same applications, from three councils to fifteen [2]. The only performance figure published for it is a time saving [2].
What changed on Saturday
The Town and Country Planning (Discharge of Local Planning Authority Functions) (England) Regulations 2026 were made on 15 July and came into force on 31 October 2026 [1]. Regulation 4 is one sentence long: a local planning authority "must make arrangements so that any Schedule 1 application made to that authority is determined by an officer of that authority" [1].
Schedule 1 lists fifteen kinds of application. The ones residents meet most often are householder applications, minor commercial applications, and minor residential schemes of one to nine homes on a site under half a hectare [1]. A rear extension, a loft conversion, a new shopfront, a pair of houses on a garden plot: all of them now go to an officer by law.
For bigger applications, listed in Schedule 2, a committee hearing is still possible, but only if two people agree to it: a "nominated member" and a "nominated officer", who may refer the application where it raises issues "of economic, social or environmental significance to the local area" or "significant planning matters" [1]. Schedule 1 has no equivalent referral route. The one exception is an "own-interest application", made by the council itself, one of its councillors or one of its officers, which the nominated pair may still send to committee [1].
Two further provisions matter for anyone watching how this works locally. A council "must not make arrangements that limit the officer's discretion" on an application decided this way [1]. And a committee hearing a referred application may have no more than 13 members [1].
The government's case is speed and certainty: "straightforward applications will be decided by expert planning officers rather than waiting for a planning committee slot", which it says will free "councillors to focus on the most significant developments" [2]. The practical effect for residents is narrower and more concrete. A neighbour objecting to an extension next door used to be able to ask a ward councillor to have it heard in public, where the council's own scheme allowed it. For a householder application that request now has nowhere to go.
The tool arriving on the same desks
The same press release, from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government on 30 October, announced the expansion of PlanAssist, an AI tool "developed with Google DeepMind, Google Cloud, Faculty and local authorities" [2]. It "compiles the information officers need and gives an evidence-backed initial assessment, speeding up routine householder applications which make up 70% of planning officers' workload" [2].
After a trial in Camden, Barnet and Dorset, twelve more councils have joined for twelve months: Ashford, Lambeth, Newcastle, Nottingham, Bristol, Cumberland, North Lincolnshire, Rochdale, Redbridge, South Gloucestershire, Stoke-on-Trent and Westminster [2]. The government says it intends "to make it available to every council in England by the end of 2027" [2].
So in those fifteen places, the category of application that councillors lost on Saturday is the category a machine now writes the first assessment of. The release is clear that "Planning officers remain responsible for reviewing applications and making decisions" and that "PlanAssist will not be mandated software" [2]. Nothing in the regulations delegates any decision to software, and nothing published suggests officers are deferring to it. The question is what anyone outside the planning office can see.
One number, and it measures speed
The release gives one result from the trial: "Early testing cut time spent on key planning tasks by 58% - helping us halve processing times for routine householder applications from eight weeks to four" [2]. It gives no figure for how often the tool's initial assessment matched the officer's final decision, no sample size and no link to an evaluation. Officers in the twelve new councils will use it alongside their normal process "to test its performance at scale" [2], which is the government's own statement that performance at scale is still unknown.
The money was disclosed in June
The October release names no contract. The June announcement of the same tool, then called a prototype and known internally as Augmented Planning Decisions, did. Its notes to editors say "MHCLG is funding APD (Augmented Planning Decisions) with an £8.2million contract with Google Cloud, Google DeepMind and delivery partner Faculty", with alpha trials beginning in May 2026 [3]. The October release confirms the link in its last line: "PlanAssist is the name now given to the AI prototype announced in June 2026" [2].
The June release also set out the plan that October has since overtaken. "Subject to successful results", trials would expand "to up to 10 additional councils later in 2026" [3]. Twelve joined [2].
How the description of the output changed
Read side by side, the two announcements describe the tool's output differently. In June the prototype "provides planning officers with an initial assessment they can consider when making their decision", and if successful it would be rolled out "with every assessment reviewed and approved by a qualified planning officer before any decision is made" [3]. In October the output is "an evidence-backed initial assessment", and the commitment is the more general "Planning officers remain responsible" [2].
That is a change of wording in press releases, and wording in press releases creates no legal duty in either direction. It is still worth recording. In four months the government's own description of what the machine produces moved from something an officer may consider to something described as evidence, and the published basis for the move is a time saving.
What councillors and residents in the fifteen councils can ask
Planning committees were where a contested application was argued in public, with a report, a vote and a minute. With householder applications now decided by officers by law, the public record of each decision is the officer's report and the decision notice. That makes four documents worth asking each of the fifteen councils for, through a councillor's question at full council, a scrutiny committee, or a request on WhatDoTheyKnow so the answer becomes a public link:
- whether the council has completed a data protection impact assessment for PlanAssist, and whether it will publish it;
- the council's agreement with the department for the twelve-month trial, including what applicant and neighbour data the tool receives;
- whether officer reports and decision notices will record that an AI tool produced the initial assessment, so an applicant or a planning inspector on appeal can see it;
- whatever measure of agreement between the tool's assessments and officers' decisions the council will receive during the trial.
There is also a fixed date. Regulation 8 requires the Secretary of State to review the regulations and publish a report by 31 October 2028, setting out their objectives and how far they have been achieved [1]. That review will land after the government's own target for PlanAssist to reach every council in England [2]. A council that wants its evidence in it would do well to start keeping the numbers now.
A companion piece on yeandel.co.uk examines the supplier and data-sovereignty side of the same announcement [4]. The regulations and both government releases have been passed to trackedchanges.co.uk for a line-by-line reading against their own claims.
The committee vote on the extension next door has gone. What replaces it is a file, and the file is only as accountable as what it records.
Sources
- The Town and Country Planning (Discharge of Local Planning Authority Functions) (England) Regulations 2026, SI 2026/854, made 15 July 2026, in force 31 October 2026. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2026/854/contents/made
- Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and The Rt Hon Angela Rayner MP, "Faster planning decisions as new rules and AI tackle delays" (30 October 2026). https://www.gov.uk/government/news/faster-planning-decisions-as-new-rules-and-ai-tackle-delays
- Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, The Rt Hon Ian Murray MP and The Rt Hon Matthew Pennycook MP, "AI tool to slash planning decision times as government accelerates push to build 1.5 million homes" (16 June 2026). https://www.gov.uk/government/news/ai-tool-to-slash-planning-decision-times-as-government-accelerates-push-to-build-15-million-homes
- Kevin Yeandel, "England's Planning Committees Lost the Small Applications on Saturday. Google's AI Now Writes the First Assessment.", yeandel.co.uk (1 November 2026). https://www.yeandel.co.uk/22-q3-2026-updates/planassist-first-assessment.html