The Alan Turing Institute revealed that over 3.5 million planning applications are submitted in the UK each year, each of which needs to be manually validated and approved by a planning officer. 

The institute concluded that the manual validation represents 250,000 hours are spent by council officers running validation checks, as over a third of planning applications contain basic errors. 

However, John believes that we are not heading to a future in which a development proposal can be managed, submitted, and determined by a computer. 

He said: “Developers working across different authorities could benefit from the standardisation of validation requirements, automation could do away with the creativity and “colour” of individually prepared local plans or officer reports.

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“Standardisation of masterplans to ensure they can be read by computers could also lead to further homogenisation of new developments at the expense of innovation and the ability to tailor a layout to site-specific circumstances.  

“Artificial intelligence is coming whether we like it or not.

“Local authorities, companies and individuals need to be able to be able to adopt, use and understand these tools, requiring time and investment.

“Nevertheless, artificial intelligence has enormous potential to speed up the development process for applicants and authorities.

“AI will transform the way we undertake data-driven and administrative tasks, easing workloads and allowing us to spend more time “planning”.

“Negotiating good planning outcomes will continue to require human actors to exercise nuance, common sense, creativity and critical judgement, all things that cannot — and should not — be automated.”