You became a planning officer to shape places, not to spend your evenings re-reading flood risk assessments.
Officers spend hours reading application packs before they can start writing. Every delegated report is drafted from scratch despite following the same structure. Policy conflict checking is manual — cross-referencing the local plan against submissions line by line. 8-week and 13-week targets are slipping. Appeal risk climbs when reports are poorly evidenced. The work is skilled, but too much of it is mechanical.
No AI tool understands planning.
Generic document summarisation tools can’t cross-reference your local plan policies with the content of an application submission. They don’t know what a material consideration is. They can’t distinguish between a design and access statement and a flood risk assessment. They don’t understand delegated reports, committee reports, condition drafting, or the difference between outline and full permission.
Planning language is specialist. Material considerations, Section 106 obligations, the presumption in favour of sustainable development, the weight to be given to emerging policy — these terms have precise meanings that generic AI models get wrong or flatten into vague summaries. You need domain-fluent AI, not a chatbot that has read the NPPF once.
And the stakes are real. A poorly evidenced officer report doesn’t just slow you down — it creates appeal risk, costs the council money, and undermines public confidence in the planning process.
We haven’t built this yet. But we’ve built the machine that builds it — five times.
Every Genie product started the same way: inside a real council service, with the staff who do the work, solving a problem they couldn’t hire their way out of. The pattern is proven. Planning is next.
EHCP Genie
Started inside SEND teams. Caseworkers shaped every iteration. Now live at 40 councils, 80% drafting time saved, 4,000+ children supported. The model works.
Needs Assessment Genie
Started at Wigan with adult social care practitioners. Built around their assessment workflow. Now used by 300+ social workers. Wigan scored the highest CQC rating in England — 95 out of 100.
Minutes Genie
Started with committee officers who were spending hours on meeting records. Now in 10+ councils, 600+ hours saved. Same incubator, same method, same result.
Planning is next
In May 2026, the Wigan AI Incubator began prototyping sessions with real planning teams. Same platform. Same co-creation method. The goal: AI that reads the application pack, cross-references local plan policies, flags conflicts, and produces a structured first-draft officer report. The planning officer stays in control of the judgement — the AI handles the reading and the first draft.
What it could look like
The target: AI that handles the mechanical reading and drafting, so planning officers can focus on the judgement that actually requires their expertise.
Read the application pack
Design and access statements, flood risk assessments, transport assessments, ecology reports, heritage statements — the AI reads them all, regardless of format or length.
Identify material considerations
Extract the considerations that matter for this specific application. Not a generic checklist — a contextual analysis grounded in what the applicant has actually submitted.
Cross-reference local plan policies
Map the application against your adopted local plan, neighbourhood plans, and supplementary planning documents. Flag where the proposal aligns, where it conflicts, and where the weight of policy is uncertain.
Draft the officer report
Produce a structured first draft — site description, planning history, consultation responses, policy assessment, conditions. The planning officer reviews, refines, and applies professional judgement. The AI handles the reading and assembly.
Housing Planning Agentic AI (AI-008) — for councils that need intelligent document processing now, our agentic AI for planning document intake is available as a solutions engagement. Ready
We’ll run AI against a real planning application from your council and show you what it produces. Not a slide deck. Not a hypothetical. Your data, your policies, your application pack — processed in front of your team.
You’ll see exactly where the AI adds value, where it needs officer judgement, and whether this is worth pursuing further. No commitment beyond a day.
Discovery Days are free. We ask that your head of department sponsors the session and brings the people who can make decisions and make things happen.
Or email us directly: info@agilisys.co.uk