MHCLG expands AI planning push with ‘Extract’ tool to digitise decades of local authority records

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) has set out the next phase of its digital planning reforms with Extract, an AI-powered tool designed to help councils unlock decades of planning information trapped in legacy formats.

In a blog published by the department’s Digital Planning team, officials said local planning authorities across England hold valuable data on conservation areas, Article 4 Directions and Tree Preservation Orders, but much of it remains buried in scanned PDFs, archived maps and paper files organised differently by each authority.

Extract has been developed by MHCLG’s Digital Planning Programme in partnership with the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology’s (DSIT) Incubator for Artificial Intelligence (i.AI). The tool converts historic planning maps and documents into standardised, machine-readable datasets, with tasks that can take officers hours reportedly reduced to minutes.

The department positioned the service as core infrastructure for wider housing and planning ambitions, linking better-quality planning data to the government’s target of delivering 1.5 million new homes during this Parliament. Officials said faster planning decisions depend on a system that is “faster, more transparent and data-driven”.

According to MHCLG, councils stand to benefit in four main areas: reducing the administrative burden on planning teams, improving public access to records, enabling new digital planning services, and contributing to a growing national planning dataset.

That national dataset is hosted through the Planning Data platform, which the department said already publishes open, standardised data from more than 100 councils. In March, the platform recorded almost 7,000 users – its highest monthly figure since analytics were reintroduced – with strong interest in datasets such as conservation areas, listed buildings, brownfield land and tree preservation orders.

Nationwide plan for digitising documents

The latest announcement builds on the government’s 2025 launch of Extract, when ministers said the service would be rolled out to all councils and help digitise planning documents nationwide.

MHCLG said the product has been developed using standard government service design methods, including on-site research with councils, observation of planning and GIS teams, and iterative testing to ensure the AI-enabled service is both trustworthy and usable.