Gemini accelerates building permit processing in the UK

Google DeepMind and Faculty are testing a Gemini prototype in three UK councils to halve planning application processing times before a 2027 national rollout.

Google DeepMind is partnering with the British government to build, with Gemini, a prototype designed to accelerate the processing of individual planning applications. The stated goal: to halve the decision-making time for planning officers, in a country that has set a target of 1.5 million new homes by 2029 and whose services are overwhelmed with backlogs.

The prototype acts as an assistant, handling the bulk of the administrative work: it gathers case data on a single screen, identifies applicable national and local policies with verifiable citations, summarizes consultation responses, then drafts an initial report, including conditions. The planning officer, however, remains the sole decision-maker: they review every line and can amend everything, with the prototype maintaining an auditable record of each step.

Developed with Google Cloud, the company Faculty, and the local authorities of Barnet, Camden, and Dorset, the tool is being tested in these three areas before a national rollout targeted for 2027. It extends Extract, a previous Gemini tool for digitizing old planning documents, already available to all English councils.