Today at Google Cloud Summit London we are celebrating a significant milestone in the UK Government’s journey towards a digitally enabled planning system. The Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) and the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) have shared major updates on two landmark projects that will redefine how local authorities work: the national rollout of the Extract tool and the continued progress of the Augmented Planning Decisions prototype.
While both initiatives use Google Cloud’s technology, the Augmented Planning Decisions prototype represents a unique collaboration between the government, Google Cloud, Google DeepMind and our faculty partners. In contrast, the Extract tool was developed in-house by MHCLG and the Incubator for AI (i.AI) – the government’s in-house applied AI team. Here’s how the Google Cloud platform provides the secure, enterprise-grade foundation required to develop these innovations during the most innovative trial phases.
The UK government is the primary architect and owner of this digital transformation, but bringing such a vision to life requires a robust and scalable infrastructure. The decision to build the alpha version of the Augmented Planning Decisions tool via Google Cloud is central to the long-term success of the project. This prototype is currently being developed and alpha tested with London Borough of Barnet, Dorset Council and London Borough of Camden local planning authorities to help planning staff navigate complex local policies. The government plans for the Augmented Planning Decisions (APD) tool to be made available to municipalities nationally from 2027. The results at this stage are early and experimental. If MHCLG chooses, Google Cloud is well placed to provide the resilient infrastructure needed to scale this service to all 300+ local authorities across the country, ensuring that as the tool moves from its initial alpha phase, it remains fast, reliable and ready for daily public use.
Alongside this, MHCLG and i.AI have rolled out their Extract tool to all councils across England following a series of highly successful trials. This tool automates the processing of complex planning documents, and its availability throughout the country is made possible by the reliability of Google Cloud. Handling sensitive government data on this scale requires the highest level of security and risk management. By using Gemini on Google Cloud, the government can use the advanced reasoning of our most capable AI models in a protected environment. This approach allows the government to mitigate risks like rapid injection and ensure that data remains sovereign and secure. Extract is expected to save the average municipality about 255 hours of manual work digesting documents into digital form.
This achievement is a testament to a strong collaborative ecosystem involving MHCLG’s policy expertise, i.AI’s technical prowess, Google DeepMind’s cutting-edge research and engineering, and faculty delivery expertise. By using Gemini and Google Cloud’s infrastructure for the basic development work, the government has ensured that these tools will not just be experimental pilots, but production-ready solutions. As the Augmented Planning Decisions tool moves towards its 2027 goals, Google Cloud is proud to be the platform of choice for its development, proving that when public sector vision is supported by enterprise-scale technology, the result is more efficient and transparent systems for all.