Why does good planning data matter?
Planning officers and others who use the planning system, often report spending significant time gathering information that should be easy to find - or paying for services to do it for them. Making planning data easy to find, use and trust is essential to improving transparency, reducing manual processing and the monitoring burden on planning authorities.
However, modern planning services face a data bottleneck. Information about how land can be used is often stored in different formats - physical documents, scanned maps and archived PDFs – and organised differently by each authority. This makes it hard to access and use.
We’ve made real progress with the Planning Data Platform publishing standardised, open data – including Conservation Areas, Article 4 Directions and Tree Preservation Orders - from over 100 councils. But there is more to do to convert England’s planning records into useable, structured, digital data.
What will Extract achieve?
Extract helps planning authorities to digitalise their records faster and to a consistent standard, enabling the next generation of modern planning software that will increase capacity and capability in our planning system. In testing, data extracting tasks that would take officers hours to complete manually are being done in minutes.
As a result, we expect to create wider benefits including:
- More open planning data: When planning records are easy to find online, planning services’ users can identify the right locations and policies before applications are made. This will improving public and developer understanding and before they apply — making applications more accurate and less likely to face delays.
- Fuel for innovation: Consistent, accessible planning data powers modern digital planning tools like PlanX, BOPS and the Digital Site Register, giving applicants automated guidance and helping officers, speeding up decision-making.
- A foundation for AI in planning: Reliable, standardised, machine-readable data is the building block for the next generation of modern planning software, digital tools and AI models that are needed to deliver more homes and infrastructure at scale.
How does Extract work?
Extract ‘digitalises’ planning documents to support council’s specialist GIS officers and makes it easier for planning officers to unlock data by lowering the technical barriers involved in creating key datasets for decision-making: Conservation Areas, Article 4 Directions and Tree Preservation Orders.
Extract does not scan paper documents, but it will convert digital document into reliable data easier. Once exported, it can be integrated into digital tools and used in geospatial analysis to inform planning decisions and plan preparation.
Planning authorities will be able to use this service, but it does not make planning decisions, evaluate applications, or replace planners and GIS officers.
Where we are now and how you can help
Several local planning authorities have already been testing Extract as part of the Alpha phase. The technology underpinning Extract is constantly evolving. What existed only six to nine months ago has already advanced significantly to deliver more consistent results, more often.
We are expecting to make the tool available to all local planning authorities by Spring 2026. To get there, we need more local planning authorities to use Extract in a live Beta phase.
Your participation will:
- Help improve the tool's performance and resilience before wider rollout
- Enable you to publish planning data that the public can access
- Create data to train new AI models for planning
Get involved
If your authority would like to take part in the live Beta phase, or to find out more, please email digitalplanningteam@communities.gov.uk with “Extract” in the subject line.
For more information about Extract read our MHCLG Digital blog post: Extract: Using AI to unlock historic planning data – MHCLG Digital