"AI can help, but not in isolation from policy - they need to work together"
- Josh Rains - Landmark Geodata
When the Government unveiled its new AI-powered planning tool, Extract, it sent a clear signal that data and automation are moving centre stage in housing policy. That is an encouraging step, but as in most instances, material improvements to system change are reliant on a wider transformation.
Planning in the UK is considered slow, fragmented, and a barrier to growth. This is because it sits at the intersection of competing pressures. Planning and development is an emotive subject at a local level that rolls up to ambitious target challenge at a national level. It represents a challenge that has never been more visible, against a backdrop of years of underinvestment in skills, technology, and data. All investment in this area must target an approach that transforms a process from symbol of delay to a complementary system that delivers progress.
Planning applications at a low ebb
Landmark’s latest Data Insights Report highlights the depth of the challenge. In 2024, planning applications - across all scales - fell to their lowest level in more than a decade, with just 690,000 applications submitted nationwide. This total covers a wide variety of projects, often encompassing multiple dwellings, so it underscores systemic slowdown rather than just a dip in housing supply.
From digitisation to integration
AI can help, but not in isolation from policy - they need to work together. The Government’s launch of Extract, alongside its ongoing focus on planning reform and updates to the National Planning Policy Framework, all point to a growing national effort to modernise the system. Success depends on policy, funding, technology and expertise aligning into a cohesive, long-term strategy.
Extract shows what’s possible when technology is used to unlock accessible data, but discovery alone doesn’t deliver transformation. Turning documents into structured, analysable data is a vital first step. Aligning this to a transformation of the process around interoperability will ensure parties - including local authorities, developers, environmental bodies, and legal professionals - can leverage the data to resolve business and process challenges.
The real opportunity lies in moving beyond digitisation to true integration. That’s where geospatial insight becomes fundamental in helping policymakers and practitioners translate unstructured information into clear, location-based intelligence that supports faster, better decisions.
Geospatial as the link between policy and practice
The need for interoperable data isn’t unique to the planning process challenges; its effectiveness is being demonstrated across adjacent systems. LandmarkConnect demonstrates how joined-up technology hubs can reduce friction across property transactions - connecting multiple disciplines into one collaborative network. Similarly, Envirocheck gives environmental consultants and developers the information to make confident, timely decisions. Through Landmark’s Planning API, powered by
Barbour ABI, we are already combining current and historical planning data with geospatial insight to enable more risk-aware investment and development.
Crucially, investments in technology such as these do not replace planning expertise; they complement it. Together, they show how geospatial intelligence can connect policy ambition with practical delivery.
Aligning programmes
National initiatives such as the Digital Planning Directory and the Pride in Place programme demonstrate how government can empower local decision-making through better use of data. This use of data represents a method of scaling the understanding of how to define a “place”, by not only an understanding of buildings and boundaries, but where people want to live, work, and start businesses - shaped by access to good schools, green infrastructure, facilities, and thriving local economies.
Geospatial data sits at the heart of understanding these dynamics. Tools such as PointX can help map where communities thrive, where investment is needed, and where opportunities for regeneration lie. Likewise, the New Towns Taskforce’s ambitions for a new generation of communities will depend on intelligence about land use and environmental data.
The emerging National Geospatial Data Framework offers the potential to bring together the wealth of location-based insight already being generated, from planning and land use data to environmental and socio-economic intelligence. By connecting geospatial insight to how and where people want to build businesses and lives, we can ensure that growth is not just planned but purposefully placed.
From bottleneck to enabler
AI-powered tools like Extract are an important milestone, but unless they sit within a broader, interoperable geospatial framework, they risk becoming isolated innovations. The next step must be to unite AI, policy, and geospatial expertise - and crucially, the deep industry knowledge that defines the real-world challenges we need to solve.
Geospatial intelligence can answer the hardest questions in planning and infrastructure, but only if it’s guided by those who know which questions to ask. By pairing technological innovation with practical expertise, we can turn the art of the possible into the art of execution, transforming planning from one of the UK’s greatest bottlenecks into one of its greatest enablers.
