Local planning authorities across England sit on a goldmine of valuable spatial data. From conservation areas to Tree Preservation Orders, this information is crucial for shaping our communities.

But there’s a catch: much of this vital history remains trapped. It is buried in scanned PDFs, archived maps, and paper files, with every authority organising it slightly differently.

A new article by Think Digital Partners highlights how a new tool: Extract, has been developed an AI-powered tool introduced by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) as the next major phase of its digital planning reforms.

Turning Hours into Minutes

Developed by MHCLG’s Digital Planning Programme in partnership with DSIT’s Incubator for Artificial Intelligence (i.AI), Extract ingests historic planning maps and documents and converts them into standardised, machine-readable datasets.

As a result Extract changes administrative tasks that used to take planning officers hours and reduced them to minutes.

The government has set a target of delivering 1.5 million new homes during this Parliament, and officials recognise that hitting that milestone requires a system that is faster, more transparent, and heavily data-driven.

4 Major Benefits for Local Councils

According to MHCLG, digitising this data provides four massive wins for local authorities:

  • Reducing Administrative Burden: Freeing up planning teams from tedious manual data entry.

  • Improving Public Access: Making it easier for citizens and developers to find the records they need.

  • Enabling New Digital Services: Paving the way for smarter, tech-enabled planning solutions.

  • Growing a National Dataset: Contributing to a unified, nationwide map of planning constraints and opportunities.

A Nationwide Rollout Built on Trust

Hosted on the government's Planning Data platform, open and standardised data from over 100 councils is currently available. Extract has seen a surge in usage, recording nearly 7,000 users in a single month recently, driven by a strong interest in datasets concerning listed buildings, brownfield land, and conservation areas.

Following its launch, the government plans to roll out Extract to all councils nationwide. Crucially, the tool wasn't built in a vacuum. MHCLG has utilised standard government service design methods—including on-site research with councils, observing GIS teams in action, and iterative testing—to ensure this AI-enabled service is both trustworthy and practical for everyday use.

What do you think of Extract? Do you think it has value for your work, or will it create more barriers for you?

Reference: Think Digital Partners "MHCLG expands AI planning push with ‘Extract’ tool to digitise decades of local authority records" 23.04.26

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