A mock-up of the 'Submit a site for a local plan' tool, shown with the fictional Planhamshire Borough Council. Before any new home is built, a suitable site has to be identified. Developers, landowners and members of the public can put forward sites through a call for sites process, carried out by every local planning authority (LPA). Planning officers then assess the sites against a number of measures and the successful ones are put forward as allocations for development in the area's local plan. Right now the call for sites process is slow and inconsistent. Councils build their own web forms or wade through email submissions with reams of attachments, alongside static maps and spreadsheets. Every authority does it differently and that costs everyone time. One planning officer told us: > "We get flooded with massive PDFs, 100-page viability reports and custom maps in all kinds of formats. Sorting through what is actually relevant takes months before we can even begin assessing whether a site is suitable." During our research, we have heard versions of this story over and over again. This is the problem we want to solve and design out of the system. We want local plans to be faster to produce, and to cover more of the country, so that decisions about housing and development can be made locally, and so communities get the homes and infrastructure they need sooner. The new local plans system is now live, and we're continuing to test and learn where digital approaches can speed things up, helping LPAs prepare and adopt a local plan within 30 months. We've been exploring where the local plan process takes the most time, and where digital approaches could help. Site identification kept coming up as one of the earliest, most repeated steps in need of standardisation, which made it a natural place to focus our efforts. The lessons we learn here will also help us increase our understanding of how digital approaches could support other parts of the plan-making process. The 'Submit a site for a local plan' is the latest tool, and we're keen to start testing it with LPAs on the real call for sites procedure for their next local plan. ## What the tool is The 'Submit a site for a local plan' tool will be a free, standardised online form that lets anyone – a landowner, developer, agent or member of the public – put forward a site, and submit it straight to their LPA in a consistent format. The tool will gather information on the site, its constraints and its potential for development. Submitters will be able to draw the site boundary directly on a map, with no GIS software needed. LPAs will be able to receive the information ready to use, with boundaries automatically converted into mapping data, and no manual re-entry required. The tool builds on national guidance, published last year, on selecting, identifying and assessing sites for local plans. The guidance tells LPAs what to collect but it doesn't give them a consistent way to collect it. This tool seeks to standardise how site information is gathered. LPAs will still decide which sites are suitable and appropriate for their area using a variety of tools and processes to make assessments. What changes is how much time and effort they spend to get the site information in front of them in a usable form, so that they can make their assessments faster. The tool doesn't replace the commercial digital tools some councils already use to help with their call for sites process, such as site assessment or viability analysis. It simply makes sure the site information being captured at the start is consistent. The ambition is that by capturing this information consistently at this point, it should make it easier for councils and the property technology industry to bring forward commercial tools to use and build on this baseline. You can read more about how councils are already using digital tools for site identification and assessment in our guidance and case studies. ## Help us test it We have built this tool, based on research and interviews with people involved in all aspects of the site identification process. We're now looking for a small group of LPAs to help us test and embed it further. If your LPA is planning to launch a call for sites round in the next 3-6 months, you could help shape a tool that aims to save your team and the people submitting sites to you, a significant amount of time, working and learning alongside our team at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. If you have any questions or are interested in getting involved, contact planmakingteam@communities.gov.uk. For more information about the Digital Planning programme, follow us on LinkedIn to stay connected, and subscribe to our newsletter for the latest updates.

**MHCLG Digital has launched early-career opportunities for 5 Junior Developers and 5 Associate Delivery Managers to join our teams in Manchester.** **Mohsina, Developer, shares how support from colleagues has helped her build her skills and grow professionally since joining the department as a junior developer back in 2024.** ## Joining MHCLG Digital I was hired by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) through one of their in-person digital recruitment days in Manchester. I remember feeling very welcomed by the team from the moment I arrived for my interview. That feeling continued when I joined, especially during my onboarding. Everyone was very supportive and made me feel comfortable picking up work from the start. ## Learning As a junior developer, I was curious about everything and wanted to understand even the little things. I was always encouraged to ask questions. As my lead developer says, "there is no such thing as a stupid question". I’d describe my work environment as a perfect, guilt-free platform to learn from senior developers. You get the space try new approaches, learn new techniques, ask questions and grow at your own pace. I was able to pair with different developers in the team, so I got to see different ways of working and learned a lot from everyone. Over time, this made me more confident, and before long, I started picking up work more independently and suggesting ideas that could make a difference. ## Growing I feel lucky to have been part of the Delta team since I started working in MHCLG. Delta is the main internal platform the department uses to collect data and make payments, and one of the most critical internal services in the department. What I enjoy most is that we are continually evolving the platform, building new features to meet user needs, and working with a modern and varied technology stack. Every day brings opportunities to learn something new and contribute to work that has a real impact. The team mostly works with Java, PostgreSQL, AWS and MarkLogic (NoSQL database). I had never even heard of MarkLogic before joining the department, but over time I've developed the skills and confidence to work with it, contribute code and support the platform. Most recently, I was involved in a major server and database upgrade, which was a valuable learning experience. The role has also given me exposure to DevOps practices and ways of working, which I find particularly exciting. Being able to work across different areas of the technology stack has helped me broaden my skills and gain a better understanding of how large-scale services are built and maintained. Most importantly, every single member in the Delta team has helped me grow in some way, and help has always been available whenever I needed it. ## Feeling heard I think MHCLG is a perfect example of an inclusive Civil Service environment. We have people from different ethnicities, cultures and backgrounds, and everyone is welcomed and respected for who they are. I’ve always felt that people are given a chance to speak, and that their opinions genuinely matter. For me, that sense of being heard and included is one of the things I value most about working here. ## A great place to build your career as a developer I honestly can't ask for much more from what I've got from the department. This junior developer role opened a new door for me. It has given me the support and opportunities to learn, contribute and grow – and I’m still learning! **If you’re thinking about building your career in software development, I encourage you to take a look at the current Junior Developer opportunities in Manchester. You can apply until 11 October.** Find out more about how you can build your career with us.

**MHCLG Digital has launched early-career opportunities for 5 Associate Delivery Managers and 5 Junior Developers to join our teams in Manchester.** **Pippa, Senior Delivery Manager, moved into delivery management last summer after 10 years working in communications. She shares what she has learnt over the last year, from the valuable transferable skills she brought to the role to what it means to be a delivery manager.** ## How my comms career showed me the impact of digital services While many of us would rather forget COVID-19, it played a pivotal role in my career and without me realising, started me on the path of digital delivery. After an enjoyable 3 years creating communications campaigns for government, charity and private sector at an education consultancy, I moved into local government as a communications manager. Six weeks later, the pandemic hit. I went from a children and young people campaign to delivering urgent public health messaging to residents and businesses. Alongside policy and operational colleagues, I produced a conveyor belt of campaigns, covering everything from social distancing guidance to vaccine uptake and business grants. Many of those campaigns communicated new or rapidly evolving digital services supporting residents and businesses remotely. Looking back, that was probably my first exposure to digital delivery. Forget my carefully crafted social media posts and newsletters, there were teams building services at pace, improving processes and solving emerging problems for users. Two years later, I joined the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government's (MHCLG's) Local Digital team, supporting local authorities with digital transformation and cyber resilience. After fumbling my way through a fog of agile terminology, I found my rhythm engaging councils with funded programmes, working alongside brilliant product, delivery and user-centred design colleagues. In 2024, I moved to head up communications in the Funding Service. I was struck by how effectively multidisciplinary teams worked together to design and build MHCLG’s digital funding service, solving problems, navigating competing priorities and continually improving the experience for users. ## Making the move to delivery management I’d been considering a role outside communications for a while but was nervous about stepping outside my comfort zone and unsure where I could best apply my skills. When a delivery gap emerged on a discovery project focusing on understanding user needs across the funding landscape, my line manager and Deputy Director encouraged me to give it a go. It was a great opportunity to try something new within the familiarity of the Funding Service and the department. Colleagues across my team and the wider directorate were incredibly generous with their time, helping me understand what delivery management involved beyond the job description, answering my endless questions, and reassuring me whenever imposter syndrome crept in. Six months of hands-on experience later, I knew this was exactly what I wanted to do. When a Senior Delivery Manager role came up in my team, I jumped at the opportunity and that started a new chapter of my career! ## The skills that transferred surprisingly well I was worried that moving profession meant starting from scratch, so it was reassuring to find delivery management relied on some skills that I had already developed while working in comms. ### Stakeholder management Over the last 10 years, I’ve worked with a diverse range of stakeholders including senior political and government figures, community leaders and industry experts. A standout moment during COVID-19 was coordinating funeral guidance with input from public health officials, religious leaders and cabinet members! Just like communications, delivery management involves listening to different perspectives, understanding what matters to people and finding common ground. The quicker you can get people aligned on what you’re trying to achieve, the easier it is down the line. ### Bringing people together One of my favourite aspects of any role is bringing people together. In delivery management you get plenty of opportunities to do this through stand ups, workshops, retrospectives and other team activities. In comms, my role was often about connecting people to tell richer stories. In delivery management, it’s about creating spaces for people with different expertise, perspectives and experiences to solve problems together. Plus, I love hearing about people’s hobbies, pets, and sometimes niche interests outside work! ### Translating complexity Something that’s not changed much is translating complexity. In comms, I turned complex policy language into something residents or local authorities could understand and use. I do the same thing now, just with delivery challenges, technical concepts or user needs. The subject matter might be different, but the aim is the same: help people understand what is happening, why it matters and what needs to happen next. ## The skills I’m still learning While I’ve transferred some skills relatively easily, others have required a bit more of an adjustment. ### Knowing when to step in and when to step back One of the things I’ve found most difficult is recognising that I don’t need to solve every problem myself. Often the sole comms professional in a busy team, I was responsible for owning a piece of work and seeing it through from start to finish. In delivery management, the role is less about doing the work yourself and more about creating the conditions for your team to succeed. I’m still learning when to offer direction and where to step back, but I’ve found giving a team space to work through a problem leads to much better ideas than whatever I’d come up with; a humbling but important lesson! ### Delivery management tools and techniques A steep learning curve has been getting to grips with the seemingly endless range of tools, techniques and frameworks in delivery management. Just when I get my head around one, another seems to appear! Through working with my mentor Jon (who recently published this brilliant blog post about our Principles of Delivery) and line manager, I’ve learned that you don’t need to use every tool available. There are well-established tools and techniques in the department and wider government delivery community to help you get started. Part of being a delivery manager is learning when to use them and building a broad and flexible toolkit that you can adapt to your team, the problem and context. I’m still very much building mine and have found shadowing other delivery managers, through MHCLG’s delivery community of practice, really helpful in seeing how different approaches work in practice. ## My advice: take the leap! I’m not much of a risk taker, but stepping out of my comfort zone into delivery management has been one of the most rewarding decisions I’ve made. Being able to learn by doing, with support and encouragement from my team and directorate, made it so much easier to take the leap. While I’m learning something new every day, it’s reassuring to discover that many of the skills I built working in comms are just as valuable in a different context. My advice to anyone considering a move into delivery, or another profession entirely: give it a go, you might be more prepared than you think! **If you're at the start of your career and interested in delivery management, make sure to check out our Associate Delivery Managers opportunities in Manchester. Applications are open until 11 October.**

The government’s 10-Year Infrastructure Strategy commits to a more spatial approach to infrastructure planning, with better coordination across sectors and between national, regional and local levels. As part of this approach, the government’s wider planning reforms will extend strategic planning across England through Spatial Development Strategies, and support faster preparation and adoption of Local Plans. Planners and policymakers need to bring together large amounts of data to understand how proposed growth and changes in land use interact with infrastructure systems, including energy, water, transport and community services, as well as the environment. They must then assess the infrastructure needed to support development, and where current or future deficits could constrain it. For example, planners may need to understand whether the electricity network can support new homes or whether population growth will increase pressure on rail capacity. Infrastructure evidence and data to answer these questions is often siloed and fragmented, produced separately by different organisations using different data and assumptions. Neighbouring strategic and local authorities can therefore find it difficult to compare infrastructure needs consistently or build a shared understanding of growth pressures across wider geographies. Producing and updating this evidence can also be costly and time-consuming. ## **What ALIGN does** ALIGN is a new national infrastructure spatial tool that brings together data, models and tools, including AI, to identify local infrastructure needs and constraints for numerous housing, industrial growth and land use scenarios. Developed by a cross-government team led by the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority (NISTA) and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government’s (MHCLG) Digital Planning programme, ALIGN supports both plan-making reform and delivery of the government’s 10-year Infrastructure Strategy. The ALIGN tool. Illustrative map only with sample data. Spatial patterns are shown for demonstration purposes only and should not be used for operational, planning or decision-making purposes. Source: Water Resource Management Plans 2024 By providing a common spatial evidence base, ALIGN allows users to explore how housing, employment and other growth scenarios interact with infrastructure capacity. For example, if you want to build 10,000 homes and new commercial floorspace in an area, the ALIGN models can tell you how much electricity and water you may need to meet that demand compared to planned capacity. By bringing together data and modelling in one place, it can speed up decision-making and plan-making for both central and local government, in turn helping to unlock and accelerate housing delivery and economic growth. ALIGN has two primary use cases at different levels of government: * ALIGN is providing central government with spatial evidence to inform policy development and decision-making. It is also being used to provide a rapid and consistent cross-sector assessment of infrastructure gaps, risks and constraints at locations identified as priorities for significant growth and housing. This will help local partners, government departments and infrastructure providers to develop a shared understanding of where further analysis, options development or coordination may be needed. * At the local and strategic level, in collaboration with the Digital Planning Programme, ALIGN will help planning authorities to prepare spatial development strategies and local plans. By providing consistent infrastructure capacity metrics for various growth and delivery scenarios, the tool can assess the implications of development choices and infrastructure delivery options at a local level. The tool can reduce reliance on multiple commissioned studies, support planning across administrative boundaries and help authorities develop evidence-based plans more efficiently. Importantly, ALIGN doesn’t make planning decisions. It provides complementary evidence to local insights and knowledge to help coordinate numerous stakeholders to test options, understand trade-offs and make informed judgements based on local circumstances. ALIGN complements government’s wider suite of digital planning products and services, including the Planning Data platform, Open Digital Planning and Extract, helping local government self-serve through better use of data and tools to support growth and development. ## What’s happening next Options are currently being considered for a phased rollout of the tool and its data this financial year. You will be able to find out more information about ALIGN, the data and models it uses at an upcoming webinar later this year. Register your interest if you'd like to be sent more information and be added to the invite. > For more information about the Digital Planning programme, follow us on LinkedIn to stay connected, and subscribe to our newsletter for the latest updates.

Are you in the early stage of your career and looking for an opportunity where you’ll be supported to learn, develop and progress? We’re recruiting early-career professionals to join our digital teams as Junior Developers and Associate Delivery Managers. It’s an opportunity to progress fast in an inclusive and collaborative environment, while working on impactful digital projects and services that make a real difference to people’s lives. You’ll learn through hands-on experience, supported by senior colleagues, mentoring and dedicated learning and development opportunities tailored to your role. We’re recruiting 10 people across 2 roles based in Manchester: * 5 Junior Developers * 5 Associate Delivery Managers Applications are open until Sunday, 11 October 2026. ## Do work that matters Our digital teams design, build and run services used by people and communities right across the UK. We’re all about innovation, user-centred design and agile working to solve some of the most important public challenges, and deliver improved outcomes for citizens. As a **Junior Developer** , you’ll get hands-on experience working with a mix of technology platforms and a modern tech stack in a Cloud-based environment. As an **Associate Delivery Manager** , you’ll help multidisciplinary teams deliver user-centred services, using agile ways of working to solve real problems. You could work on a great variety of programmes, as well as using AI and emerging technologies to transform how we deliver services. Whatever you work on, you’ll have opportunities to try new things, solve problems and learn from experienced colleagues. > “For junior developers joining the team, curiosity and out-of-the-box thinking are valued. You’re not limited to one technical stack or approach. Instead, developers are encouraged to test different ideas, because that is often where innovation happens. Our culture is genuinely built around experimentation, collaboration and making space for people to do their best work regardless of their level of experience.” > > **Jack, Senior Developer** > “We have a great range of digital projects for a junior delivery manager to grow their skills, and a friendly and supportive community of more experienced colleagues to help you on your journey!” > > **Evelyn, Senior Delivery Manager** ## Learn, develop and progress You don’t need to arrive knowing everything. These roles are designed to give you opportunities to develop your skills and grow professionally. You’ll have access to learning and development tailored to your role and level. This includes on-the-job learning, mentoring, training and professional certifications, apprenticeships and opportunities to learn from your peers. You’ll also be part of active Technology or Delivery communities of practice, where colleagues share knowledge, solve problems together and learn from each other. And your development does not stop with your first role. Working in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) Digital as well as being part of the wider Digital and Data profession in government offers a wealth of opportunities to continue developing your skills and explore different career paths as you progress. > “Joining as an Associate Delivery Manager opens many opportunities to learn from others, allowing you to develop some unique skills and experience alongside lots of tailored training and our community of practice. You’ll often lead ceremonies and work closely with people in a multi-disciplinary team. This will open you up to connect and get familiar with perspectives and core concepts from different professions.” > > **Ryan, Associate Delivery Manager** ## Be part of an inclusive team The MHCLG Digital Delivery co-working day, September 2026. We want everyone to feel able to contribute, develop and be themselves at work. You’ll work in small multidisciplinary teams where different experiences and perspectives are valued. We welcome applications from people of all backgrounds and encourage applications from groups that are currently underrepresented in our workforce. We support a healthy work-life balance with flexible and hybrid working, alongside a range of Civil Service benefits. These include generous annual leave and pension, and up to 6 days of fully paid volunteering leave each year, giving you time to support causes that matter to you. > “We have people from different ethnicities, cultures and backgrounds and everyone is welcomed and respected for who they are. I’ve always felt that people are given a chance to speak, and their opinions genuinely matter. For me, that sense of being heard and included is one of the things I value most about working here.” > > **Mohsina, Developer** ## A chance to meet and get to know each other Our recruitment process will give you different opportunities to demonstrate your potential and find out whether we’re the right place for you. If you progress to our assessment centre, you’ll meet friendly people from our digital teams and senior leaders, hear more about our work and learn about the opportunities available to develop your career. The assessment centre will include a collaborative team challenge, a technical exercise and an interview. It’s not just about us assessing you. You’ll also be able to ask questions, connect with potential colleagues in your specialism and get a feel for what working here could be like. > “Whatever programme you join, I think you'll find MHCLG a good place to work. People at all levels are friendly, supportive and easy to get along with, so you'll quickly build a network and meet some fantastic colleagues. One thing I really value is the freedom to get involved beyond your day job. If you're naturally curious and enjoy working across different areas, you'll have lots of opportunities to do that here.” > > **Rizwan, Senior Delivery Manager** ## Apply now Ready to start building your digital career with us? Find out more about the roles and apply by 23:55 Sunday, 11 October 2026. If you have any questions, please contact our recruitment team.

MHCLG Delivery Manager co-working day, September 2026. The digital delivery community in the department is thriving. Across different teams, professions and directorates, we found ourselves returning to many of the same conversations about what good delivery looks like. As a group of Heads of Delivery, we wanted to capture those shared beliefs in one place, so we created our Principles of Delivery. These are a set of 9 clear, tangible things to practise, to aim towards, to remember and acknowledge. They were co-written quickly, over the space of a few days to help limit the perfectionism that creeps in when something is important. While our teams use different methods, tools and delivery approaches, we believe these principles are widely applicable. They focus on behaviours and mindsets rather than specific roles or frameworks. We've described them simply as a set of principles to support consistent, effective delivery across the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG), regardless of directorate. They’re for everyone doing and delivering things. They're deliberately independent of role, grade or location. They’re for us all and it feels good to be sharing them more widely now too. These principles are now part of our internal MHCLG Digital Manual, where they sit alongside other guidance and resources that support teams across the department. We don’t want these sat around collecting electronic dust, instead they’re designed to be discussed and pointed back to. ## MHCLG Principles of Delivery ### 1. Be pragmatic, focus on what matters Delivery is about achieving outcomes, not following process for its own sake. Aim for 'good enough' where appropriate, rather than over-engineering. Use process, tools and documentation to support delivery, not slow it down. ### 2. Happy people = good delivery Pay attention to team wellbeing alongside delivery. Sustainable pace matters massively. Create an environment where people can do their best work and feel recognised for it. Teams that feel supported, valued and psychologically safe are often happier and more motivated, and deliver better outcomes. Treat people with respect regardless of role, contract or grade. Focus on outcomes over hierarchy. ### 3. Keep things open, including any bad news Openness builds trust and helps teams make better decisions, especially when things aren't going to plan. Share challenges and setbacks early. Create a culture where people feel safe to raise problems, challenge assumptions and ask for help. Be honest about what's working and what isn't. Deal with issues rather than hoping they'll resolve themselves. ### 4. Share work often, in a way that works for others Making work visible helps teams spot issues earlier, build confidence and avoid duplication. Share progress regularly using formats that work for your audience (for example, drop-ins, show and tells, email updates). Prioritise good over perfect. Early visibility is more valuable than late, finished outputs. ### 5. Plan to deliver, adapt when needed Set a clear direction and priorities, without over-specifying upfront. Adapt quickly as you learn. Plans should enable delivery, not constrain it. ### 6. Make risks visible and actionable Surfacing risks early allows teams to act before they become issues. We should all capture and share risks openly, with clear ownership and next steps. Focus on action – what are we doing about it, and by when? ### 7. Work in a rhythm and cadence that's right for the team Consistent ways of working help teams stay aligned and make progress sustainable. Set a regular delivery rhythm (for example, stand-ups, show and tells, retros) that supports the team’s work, and review it regularly, especially as the team changes. Keep meetings proportionate. Useful and lightweight over time-consuming and process-heavy. ### 8. Everything can't be a priority, help people choose Clear prioritisation helps teams focus their effort where it has the most impact. Be explicit about what matters most, and what can wait or stop. Support teams to make trade-offs, especially when demand exceeds capacity. Break work into small, manageable pieces to enable progress and reduce risk. ### 9. Make time for the delivery community Strong connections across teams improve consistency, capability and shared learning. Reuse existing tools, patterns and approaches where possible rather than reinventing. Create opportunities for delivery colleagues to connect, share experience and solve problems together. Contribute back and share what’s working and what isn’t, to help others. Find out more about what we do, how we work and how you can build your career with us.

A business case is a framework used by government to get approval to spend public money and ensure the delivery of public benefits. Our user research with people across several government departments showed that teams face similar challenges with business cases writing and approval. They are regarded as disproportionate, long-winded, unclear and difficult to both write and approve. Each department is investing time and resources into solving these same problems. We in the Digital Process Improvement team at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) like solving problems, and it doesn’t get more knotty than business cases (so far!). We’re a friendly bunch from across different backgrounds and disciplines, driven by a common goal of helping people do their jobs better, at MHCLG and across government. Why reinvent the wheel when you can share the blueprint and the service? We have a huge opportunity here for proper, cross-government collaboration. > "The goal was never to build something that only works for MHCLG. We wanted to create a foundation that others could reuse." ## Sharing is caring From the start of the project to improve the business case process, in partnership with our Approvals and Assurance team, our goal was to build something based on our guiding principles of putting people first, joining the dots and understanding data. Something robust, that could be 'plug and play' for any department who wanted help with their business case process. We started with the triage service: a way for people to self-serve business case templates and guidance. People struggle to find the correct template, understand approvals and who to speak to, according to our discovery insights. In triage, people answer a few questions to find the template they need. They are also encouraged to partner with Finance and Commercial early on, fostering the idea that collaboration is key to a successful business case. The Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade (BIST) showed an interest in the work we were doing; there were many similarities with challenges but ultimately an appetite for change and exploration was welcome and we were able to share with policy and digital teams our triage service to 'steal with pride'. ## What’s under the hood of the business case triage service? * The triage service is configurable by design, so it needs limited developer input for most content changes. Additionally, question flows can be handled by changing configuration, not code. * You can spin it up out of the box and have a local version running straight away. * You can start using your own authentication layer or disable this if it is not needed initially. * Cloud Infrastructure is in Terraform as Infrastructure as Code (IaC) – this is also modular and can be deployed with only config changes needed, rather than changing any difficult architecture – you plug in a few values and off you go. * We've used reusable patterns and the GOV.UK Design System so it’s instantly familiar to teams who have used this before – the Jinja templates are an extension of the Nunjucks ones used in the GOV.UK tutorials/component library. ## Upshot Sharing our journey so far with BIST has reinforced the value of collaboration across departments, particularly when tackling common challenges. By sharing approaches, lessons learned and reusable components, we can speed up delivery, focus resources where they add the greatest value and save time and money. Not just for MHCLG but across the entire government. Our work to transform the business case process continues as we build out the end-to-end service, and we’ll aim to share more about our progress. Who next? Arm's-length bodies? Let’s go! ## Want your own triage service or want to learn more? Get in touch! Find us at businesscaseproject@communities.gov.uk. Ellie Katona is the lead designer on the business case project.

Share Homes for Ukraine data, our in-house system for managing Homes for Ukraine data turned one this week! In this blog post, I talk about how we recently open-sourced the code for the system and why it matters. Open source coding is software built on teamwork, where developers freely share their code with the public. It means anyone can look under the hood of a digital component or service. For public services, this collaborative approach matters, especially because it saves money by allowing other public sector organisations to reuse software instead of rebuilding it from scratch. ## Why do we want to make our code public? Working in the open can be daunting! All your mistakes would be there for the world to see in a public code repository, with nowhere to hide... However, open source code is part of how we build software in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) and a key part of the government Service Manual for digital services ("make source code open and reusable"). Sharing our code means that other government departments and people in outside organisations can benefit from our work, saving time and money. There are some exceptions to this rule. Some code may need to be kept private for security reasons, for commercial reasons, or to prevent revealing details of a policy before the government is ready to announce it publicly, for example. The 'Share Homes for Ukraine data' (or 'Share' for short) application code had to remain private at the start of the project for commercial reasons. However, it's usually best to work in the open from the start wherever possible. ## How we did it Before we made our Share application code open, we did some due diligence, following the guidance set out in The MHCLG Way and the government Service Manual. We did a thorough review of the code base to check for any security concerns, including using automated scanning tools. Our repository was thankfully already in good shape – no committed secret values or vulnerabilities in the code. We discussed our open-sourcing plan with the MHCLG Cyber Security team, who were happy for us to proceed. We reviewed our code to make sure it didn’t contain anything commercially sensitive. We also looked at the content of our test data – our codebase shouldn't contain 'real' looking names or emails that could be flagged as personally identifiable information. We changed all the email addresses used in our tests to be an 'example.com' domain, and made sure any names were clearly anonymous, for example 'Joe Bloggs'. We looked at our code comments, to check for any language that didn’t meet the Civil Service Code. While doing this, we found a number of 'TODO' statements that were left over from the speedy development needed before the deadline. Some actions were already done but the 'TODO' was still there as a comment! We tidied these up. GitHub – the source code tool used at MHCLG – doesn’t just store code, it also stores the history of every change made. Reviewing the history would be too time consuming, so we decided to make a clean start with a fresh repository, a fresh history and a fresh changelog. The old repository would be archived so that our developers could always refer back to it if necessary. ## Preparing the new open source repository The exciting part! The whole team got together on a call to set up the new GitHub repository. First, we created an empty repository with an MIT licence, as recommended in The MHCLG Way. Before we moved over any code, we needed to 'harden' the GitHub repository settings to ensure our code and our deployments remain secure. This was very important, as we use GitHub to deploy our code to our project’s cloud hosting provider, AWS. We wanted to reduce the risk of compromising this connection to our live environment as much as possible. We did the following: * Restricted permissions on the repository, so that only Homes for Ukraine team members could submit and approve pull requests (we made the decision to not accept any third-party code contributions) * Limited GitHub Actions workflow permissions to the minimum needed, and restricted third-party actions to those on a SHA-pinned safelist only * Set up branch protection, so that code can only be merged to our main branch if certain conditions are met * Removed 'projects' and wikis, as we don’t use these features As well as preparing the repository, we also prepared our engineering team. We have updated our internal team manual with guidance on coding in the open, including also useful reminders such as the importance of following the Civil Service Code when writing commit messages, comments and pull requests. Once we were happy with the configuration of the repository, we were ready to move the code. This was as simple as checking out the new repository locally, then copying over the files we wanted to keep from the old repository, to start a fresh git history. Some other small tasks were needed to hook up the new repository to our deployment pipeline. We adjusted our AWS/GitHub OpenIDConnect policy to allow the new repository to connect to AWS and copied over the necessary environment variables and secrets to the new repository. We also added a link to MHCLG’s vulnerability reporting route so that friendly security researchers can disclose issues to us in a safe way. ## Ironing out teething problems After we moved over to the new public repository, there were some minor teething problems. Some of our GitHub 'actions' workflows relied on the result of a previous run. These failed when we first moved over to the new repository, as there was no 'previous' run to compare with. We had to force-merge the initial pull request, in order to bypass one of these failed checks. We also had to manually create our first 'release', which is normally an automated process. Our automated security tool automatically flagged up an issue with one of our dependencies – not a security issue (which would have been detected previously), but a licensing issue. The dependency used a GPL (GNU General Public Licence) restricted licence, instead of a permissive licence like MIT. Imagine a friend let you borrow an item – would you then be allowed to lend that item to someone else without permission? After reviewing the licence terms, we determined this specific instance was OK, as the dependency was only used internally, for code linting – that is, we wouldn’t be lending it to anyone else! Public GitHub repositories have had some unexpected advantages for our team: * The workflow runners on public repositories have 4 processes instead of 2 – this means our tests run twice as fast. * Public repositories have free CodeQL scanning and enhanced push protection to avoid leaking secrets and sensitive data. This is an added bonus on top of our existing security measures. ## What's next Overall, the switch went smoothly for our developer team. The new repository served as a good opportunity to make sure everyone had their pre-commit hooks set up correctly, and an up-to-date local environment. The Homes for Ukraine Digital team hope to open up more of our private repositories in the future. If you work in the public sector and are interested in open-sourcing your repository, feel free to get in touch if you have any questions. You can view our shiny new GitHub repository here. Read previous blog posts from the Homes for Ukraine Digital team.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming an important part of how we design and deliver digital services. To help product and delivery teams across the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) adopt AI more safely and effectively, our Technical Architecture team developed the AI Gateway – a single, shared departmental platform that gives teams a secure, consistent and faster way to access approved AI technologies. In this blog post, I share what we did, why we did it and what we learnt. ## The problem to solve Product and delivery teams building digital services in MHCLG need to access AI capability without each needing to spend time designing how that AI access is secure and safe. Without a central route, multiple teams would end up building separate integrations, governance approaches and support models for different AI services. Repeating this across multiple teams would have created duplication, delays and inconsistent standards. Our team recognised early the need to focus on the wider organisational challenge affecting all digital product and delivery teams rather than a single technical requirement. ## The approach Our aim was to create a capability that could be reused across the organisation, leading to cost savings, reducing time spent by each team on development and providing one well-managed and scalable solution. It made sense to create a shared AI platform rather than a series of separate solutions for different AI providers. Working with colleagues across the wider digital team, we led the architectural approach for the Gateway using Microsoft Azure API Management as the core platform. This gave MHCLG a single governed route to approved AI services, rather than leaving each team to design its own connection pattern. We wanted the Gateway to be deliberately AI provider-agnostic, and to support models from multiple providers through one consistent approach that supports future integration of additional AI models. ## The solution The solution is a reusable platform with shared controls, common onboarding and a consistent support model. It makes secure AI access available much more easily and much earlier in the development lifecycle than was previously possible through direct API access. The Gateway is designed to support developers, data scientists, applications and services running in Azure and AWS. This allows AI to be embedded directly into departmental services, not simply accessed from individual devices. At a departmental level, the platform provides visibility of how AI is being used, enables appropriate technical controls from the centre, tracks costs and supports cost optimisation. ### A faster route to AI adoption By using the AI Gateway, projects can benefit from: * a standardised API for AI access * clear onboarding and support processes * shared security and governance controls * less development effort and faster implementation This means delivery teams can focus on solving business problems and improving services, rather than managing the underlying AI infrastructure. ### Security and governance by design As AI becomes more widely embedded into digital services, it is important to maintain the right security and governance controls. The AI Gateway supports this by: * restricting access to approved models and vendors * enforcing departmental security controls * supporting audit and monitoring requirements * providing central oversight of AI usage * promoting compliance with departmental standards This creates a safer foundation for innovation and reduces the risks of ungoverned AI access. ### Improved visibility and cost management As demand for AI grows, understanding how it is being used becomes increasingly important. The Gateway gives teams central visibility of: * AI consumption across services * usage trends and adoption patterns * cost and resource use This helps teams understand demand, manage spend and make sure AI investment delivers value. ## Things we learnt that helped us design the AI Gateway ### Build a scalable foundation Many AI projects begin with one tool, one team or one use case. We recognised early that the solution needed to be able to scale well across a large department. Building the Gateway on Microsoft Azure API Management and shaping it as a shared departmental platform meant the team can fully integrate with MHCLG’s existing technology stack and leverage the investment already made in this technology. The team created a practical foundational way for MHCLG to adopt AI safely, efficiently and consistently, while still leaving room for the platform to evolve as the technology changes. ### Make sure AI is used safely and appropriately Responsible use was built into the project from the beginning, with a clear goal of ensuring other teams could use AI safely and appropriately through this solution. We put the solution through the departmental internal AI approval process along with special technical and data protection approvals to ensure it was assessed against internal policies. Additionally, the Gateway went through penetration testing assessment. The platform uses existing strong authentication and RBAC access control methods alongside integration into existing monitoring, logging and auditability to provide visibility, with tooling that is backed by commercial contracts and cyber security assurance. The project was supported by governance documentation covering acceptable use, accountability, operational responsibilities and data handling, and links into the department’s wider AI governance approach, including our AI Register and approval process. We did not treat governance as something that slows innovation down. We showed that AI can be adopted in a way that is ambitious and practical, while maintaining the right levels of security, compliance and public trust. ### Collaboration and focus on user needs Our team did not approach this work in isolation. We helped shape the architectural direction as part of a wider team effort involving colleagues across digital, Cloud, DevOps, security, governance and delivery functions. From the outset, the Gateway was designed for shared use across all teams, not just one project or technical area. We worked with colleagues to develop reusable patterns, onboarding guidance, governance artefacts, technical documentation, support arrangements and operational processes. ## The impact The biggest impact has been making AI significantly easier, faster and more efficient for colleagues across the department to adopt responsibly. Teams now have a clearer route to approved AI services, with common controls, onboarding guidance, monitoring and support already in place. This reduces the cost and time required to develop digital services. The Gateway has already been adopted by multiple teams and provides access to approximately 20 AI models through a single, governed platform. Several initiatives across MHCLG are already using the platform, with more projects progressing through onboarding. As a result, colleagues spend less time recreating technical foundations and more time exploring how AI can improve services, support users and deliver better outcomes for the public. The platform provides a strong foundation for wider AI adoption across MHCLG as demand continues to grow. ## What’s next We continue to develop the solution to deliver lasting value to the department, based on providing consistent approaches to governance, security and support. Our wider roadmap looks to expand the AI capabilities available through the Gateway. Future phases of work will include access to AI services hosted by additional Cloud services providers, giving teams more flexibility while maintaining the same governance, security and operational standards. If you’re working on similar challenges across government and would like to learn more about this project, get in touch by emailing technology.team@communities.gov.uk.

Content is one of the most important assets in an organisation. It shapes decisions, supports services and helps colleagues get things done. That’s why we’ve established the Content Improvement team, a digital function focused on making sure our internal content, tools and platforms are accessible and user-friendly, and meet the needs of all our colleagues. By taking a user-centred design (UCD) approach to our internal content landscape and treating content as critical infrastructure, rather than just a communications tool, we’re supporting our digital strategy objective to enhance operational excellence and drive organisational efficiency, helping our department deliver better outcomes. In this blog post I share what we are doing and why we are doing it. ## Internal content as critical infrastructure Earlier this year, after the redesign of our department intranet, I partnered with a user researcher colleague on a discovery to better understand our department’s wider internal content landscape. This included content held across internal platforms such as SharePoint, ServiceNow, Teams and Confluence. I expected to uncover duplication, outdated pages and opportunities for improvement, but it quickly became clear that this wasn’t the main problem. This was simply the visible symptoms of a deeper, common challenge across many large organisations: a fragmented ecosystem of platforms, ownership and lack of consistent central governance and culture surrounding content. We often think of content as something that sits on a website, but in reality, it underpins how people make decisions, complete tasks and deliver services. If content is essential to how an organisation functions, then it is not just a communications asset. It is part of our internal infrastructure, and organisations should treat it that way. ## What we discovered about our content landscape The discovery phase helped to better understand the challenges facing our internal content landscape. We examined our existing content ecosystem in depth, speaking to content owners and platform users, gathering feedback through surveys, and mapping user journeys across key internal platforms. This helped us to identify pain points and uncover recurring themes. These challenges spread across multiple internal platforms, where content may be duplicated and not always clearly owned or maintained. Teams were publishing content without shared standards, governance or specialist support, making it harder to create a coherent, consistent and accessible content landscape. This increased the risk of outdated information, inconsistent user experiences and accessibility barriers for colleagues trying to find and use the information they needed. Furthermore, as artificial intelligence (AI) tools become a bigger part of everyday work, well-structured, accessible and standardised content is essential. High-quality content not only improves the user experience for colleagues but also enables AI tools to surface, interpret and reuse information more accurately and effectively. ## The role of the Content Improvement team Internal content might not attract the same attention as external services, but it has a direct impact on how effectively we work. An outdated page, duplicated process or unclear instruction creates friction for colleagues. Over time, that friction becomes wasted effort and unnecessary demand on support teams. For years, organisations have invested heavily in creating content. Far fewer have invested in managing it. That’s why governance matters. Good governance isn’t about bureaucracy. It’s about making sure content remains accurate, owned, findable and useful long after it’s published. Our team exists to improve the quality, consistency and sustainability of our internal content estate. We work alongside and support existing teams with content best practice, good governance and accessibility. Our job is to fix systemic issues, not through tactical tidying, but through a strategic, department‑wide approach. We sometimes joke that we’re part content designer, part detective and part content police. We spend our time tracing ownership, uncovering duplicate information and investigating why colleagues can’t easily find what they need. Ultimately though, our mission is simple: > Make internal knowledge accurate, findable, governed and accessible so colleagues, and the AI tools they use, can reliably get the right answer at the right time. ## Our 3-phase model The following 3 phases provide an overview of our approach: ### Phase 1: Set the standards In phase 1, we want to create a clear, unified approach to provide a single source of truth that the whole department can adopt. Before fixing anything, we need to define what “good” looks like. #### What we’re doing * Establishing our function as the authoritative owner of internal content standards, guardrails and governance * Publishing a standard internal content lifecycle, from creation to archiving * Setting rules around ownership, accountability, review cycles, accessibility and version control * Mapping critical content journeys and identifying priority content types to fix first * Establishing measurement baselines, including search satisfaction, time to find content, and AI accuracy on high-volume queries Good practice scales thanks to shared rules. Phase 1 builds the foundations for everything that follows. ### Phase 2: Fix the past The largest phase is about cleaning up legacy content. Phase 2 is not a one‑and‑done exercise. It’s a systematic transition to a sustainable, well‑governed ecosystem. #### What we’re doing * Running audits across all major platforms: intranet, SharePoint, ServiceNow, Knowledge Base, Confluence, Microsoft tools, etc. * Prioritising fixes using data from our findings, feedback and platform analytics * Introducing content templates for any new content to bring consistency and meet accessibility requirements * Consolidating duplicated internal guidance into single trusted sources * Removing or archiving outdated, conflicting or orphaned content * Rewriting high‑value content using our new standards, patterns and accessibility expectations ### Phase 3: Futureproofing (ongoing) When the estate is clean and effectively governed, we shift into long‑term sustainability. This phase is focused on raising the standards of internal content – it's not a short-term fix, but a strategic investment in content built to last. #### What we’re doing * Working closely with teams across the department to embed permanent review cycles and automated monitoring (expiry dates, metadata checks, orphaned content alerts) * Implementing consistent templates across backlog content to improve accessibility and clarity * Continuously evolving standards as AI and tools mature – including partnering with AI teams to test retrieval accuracy on live content * Training content owners across the department to build capability and confidence * Maintaining content improvement as a core competency, making sure the organisation treats content like critical infrastructure rather than a by‑product of policy and operations ## What this means for colleagues The impact of our work will be felt across teams through: * faster answers, less searching – clearer pathways and single sources of truth, less repeated queries to helpdesks * more accurate AI responses, because underlying content is better structured, governed and trustworthy * better onboarding and capability, as we support colleagues to understand how and why content should be created and set a consistent approach to how we create and manage internal content The Content Improvement team wasn’t created to fix individual pages. It was created to embed the foundations of good content at scale. As the project progresses, we will aim to share what we learn and the impact of our work. If you work on similar challenges across government and are interested in learning more about our work, get in touch. ## Join our team! We’re hiring a content designer to join our team and the wider content design and UCD community in MHCLG. It’s a great opportunity to play a key role in improving the quality, usability and impact of internal content across the department. Find out more about the role and how you can build your career with us.

## A new start for Homes for Ukraine The Homes for Ukraine Sponsorship Scheme was introduced in 2022 in response to Russia’s full scale illegal invasion of Ukraine. It enables Ukrainians fleeing the conflict to find safe accommodation with UK hosts. You can read more about how our team created ‘Share Homes for Ukraine data’, our new, sustainable in-house system (or digital service) to support this humanitarian crisis, transitioning from emergency response to long-term transformation. ## Moving on from the old platform As the new system took shape, it was called by a variety of names. Some of these referenced the old platform, which we needed to move on from. At other times, it was referred to as ‘future tech’ or ‘the new thing’. We didn’t want any of these internal nicknames to become embedded, as, from experience, they can be hard to shake off. So, before we told users about the new system, we needed to decide on the name. ## Bringing stakeholders with us Deadlines were tight, so there wasn’t time for extensive user research around the name. Naming can be an emotive topic, especially for the people closest to a service, so we needed to bring our stakeholders along with us. It was important that everyone understood the rationale behind the new name, particularly the people who would be guiding our users through the transition. As the content designer on the team, I invited key stakeholders across the Homes for Ukraine digital and policy teams to a naming workshop. I began by setting out the goals and expectations for the session. We didn’t want to go with the most popular choice. We weren’t going to vote for our favourites or make a final decision during the workshop. ## Understanding good names We established the naming architecture for the system, underneath the Homes for Ukraine service. A diagram showing the naming architecture for the system. We looked at some good examples of existing service names: * Register to vote – previously Individual Electoral Registration System * Get help with court fees – previously Fee Remission * Renew your passport * Find an apprenticeship We also looked at some confusing, "bad" names, that told us little about the product or service. We agreed that a good name: * will be OK if heard by public or press * will work for potential future groups of guests * will adapt to any future changes to the service and policies * will be good enough * will do what it says on the tin And the name will not: * be perfect * be abstract or poetic * be an acronym or initialism * need a dictionary to understand I then took our stakeholders through the government Service Manual advice on naming a government service. The system isn’t public facing, so following the naming pattern for a government service wasn’t mandatory, although we still found the patterns a useful guide to ensure we created a name that would be accessible, trusted and understood. After that, we got stuck into the mural board to put down all our ideas for describing the system. We used a series of prompts to inspire us: * what we offer * what the system helps us do * why we do it * who we do it for * how we do it * when and where we do it We came up with over 50 words and phrases to describe the system. Between us, we organised these words into a quadrant. We ranked each word against two criteria. The vertical axis ranked words from ‘not task-focused’ at the bottom to ‘describes the task’ at the top. On the horizontal axis we ranked from ‘poetic’ to ‘plain English’. Our mural board we used to rank the different names we came up with. That gave us a selection of words and phrases that sat in the top right corner, both describing the task and in plain English. We removed the other 3 sections and used a bigger version of the top right section to rank the best ones more ruthlessly, based on our acceptance criteria. We discussed these as a group and removed a few more that didn’t fit. That gave us a selection of very strong contenders for the name. ## Research and stress testing Following the workshop, I discussed the shortlist in more detail with our Head of Product. We played around with a few alternatives, looking at words with similar meanings, and changing the order of the words. Others were removed as they weren’t suitable for certain potential use cases. We agreed on the most suitable name, ‘Share Homes for Ukraine data’, plus a back-up using ‘Manage’ instead of ‘Share’. Then I went off to conduct some final, desk-based research. ### Existing service names We didn’t want our name to clash with any other services or systems, so I explored what was already out there. I found nothing that overlapped with our name. ‘Data’ was a word that came up a lot in the workshop. It can sound like jargon, but it’s commonly used and much shorter than ‘information’. So, I checked to see if ‘data’ was used by other government services. I found a few that already had ‘data’ in the name, so we decided it was appropriate to use. ## Checking user research The user researchers on the Homes for Ukraine team did a quick review of their previous transcripts. That showed us the sort of words that came up naturally during our early discovery and user testing sessions with local authorities (LAs). This confirmed that our name used words the LAs were already familiar with. It reflected how they describe the tasks they perform on the system. ### Avoiding bad names I needed to check there weren’t going to be any embarrassing moments with the name, such as an initialism that spells something rude. Also, while the system wasn’t going to be used by the public, it might still be talked about in front of the public. So, we wanted to check it didn’t sound silly or offensive in Ukrainian, as well as English. ## Choosing and communicating the name With all the due diligence complete, we agreed on Share Homes for Ukraine data. And because we didn’t want it abbreviated to an inaccessible acronym or an initialism, we decided on ‘Share’ as the official short, less formal version. We told internal stakeholders the new name by email, explaining the process we went through and the rationale behind the final decision. We also explained how to capitalise the name, using sentence case for accessibility. ## Our chosen name works because: * it’s future proof for the Homes for Ukraine scheme as it evolves * it provides a naming convention we can adapt for other schemes, for example Share [Programme name] data * it builds on the brand recognition of Homes for Ukraine * Share works in two directions – MHCLG shares data with LAs, and LAs share data with us * it doesn’t contain any jargon. We’re using words that our users recognise and understand * we avoided an initialism or abstract ‘brand’ name * it doesn’t have any unintended meanings, either through its initialism or when translated into Ukrainian We also think Share sounds warm and humanitarian. This wasn’t among our acceptance criteria at the start, but it was a lovely bonus. ## Stakeholder buy-in The whole process was also fast, taking just a couple of weeks to prepare and run the workshop, synthesise the outputs, and decide on the name. By taking stakeholders through the naming process with us, we ensured buy-in from key people. The final name was very well-received by all stakeholders. With clear communication about the name, we avoided something different taking hold informally, before external communications had begun. We love the user-centred, task-focused name of our new system. ## Hear more about the work behind Share Homes for Ukraine data Want to find out more about the work that went into delivering Share Homes for Ukraine data? Members of the Homes for Ukraine Digital team will be speaking at a few events and conferences later this summer. You can catch them at: Product for the People on 3 September 2026 devopsdays London on 17 September 2026 SDinGov (Service Design in Government), Edinburgh on 23 September 2026 Read previous blog posts from the Homes for Ukraine Digital team.

Frontline staff in local government spend a significant amount of time turning conversations into written records. Case notes, assessments and follow‑up letters are often completed when time allows between appointments, meetings and caseload pressures, reducing the time available to support people directly. Local Transcribe is a new AI-powered tool designed to change that by capturing conversations, transcribing and summarising them, and producing a draft set of case notes for officers to review and edit. We’re building it with councils and the people who’ll use it. We’re working closely with Birmingham, Hart, Maidstone, Trafford and Haringey, and we’re very grateful for the time, openness and expertise they’ve brought to shaping the product. Their input is directly influencing what we build and how it works in practice. This work is part of the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government's (MHCLG’s) Local AI programme. Our role is to work with councils to support the responsible adoption of AI across local government, focusing on practical tools that save time, reduce costs and improve services. Local Transcribe is the first product in that programme. It builds on Minute, developed by the Incubator for AI (i.AI) and piloted with 22 councils using real case data. We’re taking what worked and evolving it into a scalable service for wider use across local government, starting with housing. A mocked-up interview recording to demonstrate the Local Transcribe tool. ## Why we're doing this Housing and homelessness are key policy areas in MHCLG, and the pressure on housing teams in local councils is acute. Housing officers are managing high caseloads across a broad range of service areas, including temporary accommodation, homelessness and supporting asylum seekers. The administrative burden around each case takes up a significant share of officer time – time that could otherwise be spent with people who need their support. The features housing officers need, such as recording on a phone during a home visit or working offline when there's no signal, are the same features required by officers across other frontline services. Adult social care, children's social care, and special educational needs and disability are all priority areas for councils. By getting the foundations right in housing, we are building something that can scale into those services next. ## What we're focused on Local Transcribe has 3 areas of focus: ### Designing around frontline workflows We are working with housing officers to understand their end-to-end workflows, including the case management systems they use, the range of interactions they have with residents, and the different outputs each interaction requires. ### Building for production We are moving Local Transcribe from pilot to a fully operational service, built to handle sensitive data responsibly, meet the security and data protection standards required across local government, and scale to more councils and more service domains over time. ### Producing drafts officers can trust Local Transcribe produces a draft transcript and summary for the officer to review and edit if necessary. We will run continuous automated evaluations on transcription accuracy, summarisation quality, and bias across protected characteristics, to ensure the draft is reliable. ## What we are doing ### Design * Co‑designing Local Transcribe with partner councils across a range of geographies, sizes and housing service areas, ensuring what we build reflects the breadth of local government. * Designing human‑in‑the‑loop workflows so no AI‑generated content reaches a case record without officer review, reflecting what we are hearing from councils: “Nothing AI‑generated should go onto a case without being checked.” * Building a clear monitoring and evaluation approach, baselining key metrics with councils to understand time spent on case notes, how backlogs build, and what meaningful reduction looks like in practice. ### Building * Building Local Transcribe using the GOV.UK Design System, embedding accessibility from the start and ensuring it will be independently assessed before launch. * Standing up the core technical infrastructure to support a full service and future scaling, alongside the data protection and cyber security needed to handle sensitive casework responsibly. * Building automated data pipelines for continuous evaluation, enabling us to monitor quality, detect bias over time and move away from periodic manual reviews. * Preparing for a trial with our partner councils mentioned above, by grounding the product in real operational baselines, so we can measure genuine impact from day one. Since the programme began, we have been working in partnership with i.AI to agree a shared vision for how Local Transcribe develops beyond the original Minute pilot. We are also working with the Local Government Association (LGA) to learn from the councils already using Minute and carry those insights into what we build next. ## Looking ahead We’re working towards an early access launch with a small group of partner councils later this year. This will act as a private beta, with housing officers using Local Transcribe in their day‑to‑day work. It will help us understand what works, what doesn’t, and where the product needs to evolve. During this phase, we’ll track key performance metrics to assess whether Local Transcribe is making a meaningful difference, including the time officers spend on case notes and how backlogs change in practice. We will begin by working with a small group of partner councils helping us refine Local Transcribe and understand how it delivers value in different services and settings. As we learn from this early access phase, our ambition is to make the tool available to around 1,000 users across at least 12 councils by the end of the financial year. The insights gained will help us shape the product and identify the greatest opportunities for impact. Looking further ahead, we believe Local Transcribe has the potential to become a shared capability for local government. Subject to successful delivery and impact evaluation, we aim to open up Local Transcribe to all English councils who want to use it for housing services as part of a public beta, with the earliest opportunity to start wider enrolment being from Spring next year. We also plan to expand in other frontline service areas across 2027. ## Get involved If you work in local government, there are two ways to get involved: If you have a public sector email address, you're welcome to attend our monthly show and tells. We share what we've learned, what we've built, and what's coming next. Contact LocalAI@communities.gov.uk if you want to sign up for the show and tells. We're also looking for partner councils for our private beta. We're particularly keen to hear from councils that would help us cover a good range of geographies, regional dialects, and council sizes to ensure Local Transcribe works for all councils. Get in touch by emailing LocalAI@communities.gov.uk. Find out more about Local AI and read about our work.

MHCLG analysis of Bluesky International Ltd aerial imagery. The Advanced Analytics and AI (AAAI) team in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) helps the department use AI to improve operations, inform policy decisions and deliver better outcomes for communities across the country. We play a leading role in coordinating AI innovation across government, bringing together departments, agencies and partners to explore shared challenges and develop common approaches. Our work spans a wide range of applications, from helping officials respond more quickly and effectively to Parliamentary Questions and Freedom of Information requests, to supporting evidence-based funding decisions. The MHCLG AI Lab is the team's experimentation function, set up to test new AI tools on real departmental problems, so we understand what works, what doesn’t, and what is safe to adopt more widely. Together with Imago, Homes England and partners across government spatial data science networks, our AI Lab is investigating the potential of embeddings to accelerate the adoption of satellite technology and provide solutions to some of the real-world challenges MHCLG tackles. This is an exciting piece of work, and we are proud to have been shortlisted for a Geography in Government Award in the Innovation category! This post introduces the concept of image embeddings and their potential value for a central government department like MHCLG. Although they are not exactly the same, in the context of this post we use ‘image’ and ‘geospatial’ embeddings interchangeably. ## What are geospatial embeddings? Geospatial Foundation Models (GeoFMs) and their embeddings have emerged as one of the most exciting developments in AI. In recent months, many organisations in government (for example, space agencies like NASA, ESA), industry and academia have released their own open foundation models specifically trained for Earth observation data – data describing the Earth, often captured by satellites. In some cases, even pre-computed embeddings are made publicly available. But what are these GeoFMs and their embeddings? And why does a central government department care? Simply put, GeoFMs are AI models trained on large amounts of data collected about the Earth, including satellite imagery. They learn to recognise patterns in this data and can be applied to many spatial analysis tasks – from monitoring natural disasters to identifying different types of land for planning – without training a new model from scratch. Embeddings are the representations GeoFMs construct to be able to perform these various tasks. They can be described as the ‘numeric fingerprint’ of an image – a series of numbers which capture the different patterns that occur in an image. The following image provides an example of embeddings that have been derived for a picture of a park. A visual example of embeddings we derived from an aerial photo. Original image copyright Bluesky International Ltd, accessed through the Public Sector Geospatial Agreement. Each sub-image in red and blue represents the values for each embedded dimension. Some of these dimensions capture patterns noticeable to the human eye (for example, clearly differentiating between the path, tree and grass). Others capture patterns that are more difficult to interpret. Collectively, they are a good representation of the information encoded in the image on the left. ## Why explore the potential of embeddings for central government? Images encode a large amount of information about the state of, and changes in, the physical environment. For a department like MHCLG, which has a clear relationship with land and the built environment through housing and planning, this is particularly valuable. However, image analysis is typically difficult, expensive and time-consuming. Unlike tabular data, images are particularly large, complex and expensive to store. They also require significant amounts of pre-processing to turn from a series of wavelength measurements into analysis-ready data. Embeddings address this challenge by delivering many of imagery’s benefits without many of its costs. More specifically, they have 3 key advantages: **1. Embeddings are smaller than images while retaining most of the valuable information images contain.** They have the dual benefit of being considerably smaller than the original image from which they were derived, while retaining the key patterns or information encoded within this original image. **2. Embeddings can easily be integrated within existing numeric analysis.** They allow images to be represented in tabular format, such as that used in a spreadsheet. This is a huge advantage for users who are more familiar with this approach than with raw images. This property also means embeddings can be used as an additional input into existing numeric analysis. **3. Embeddings are reusable.** Once derived from an image, embeddings can be reused across multiple different applications – whether that is identifying similar images, classifying images, or considering change between 2 images. All this without ever having to touch the source image. These qualities combined mean that embeddings have the potential to accelerate Earth observation and image analysis in government by reducing costs, complexity and time taken to work with images. ## What can embeddings help MHCLG do? Potential applications of embeddings and wider geospatial AI capabilities for our department can be grouped into the following categories: * **Classifying different types of land for planning.** For example, identifying small-site opportunities or potential brownfield sites for redevelopment. * **Identifying the presence of specific patterns in the physical environment.** For example, identifying the presence of cladding in images of residential buildings. Or identifying the presence of natural and human-made fire breaks to inform wildfire risk mapping. * **Detecting changes in the physical environment.** By comparing patterns in pictures taken at different points in time, we can determine where there have been changes and the scale of these changes. This can help monitor and quantify urban development, monitor the condition of important community infrastructure, and map the scale of natural emergencies, such as floods or wildfires as they happen. * **Measuring or predicting key outcomes across the country.** Insights from images can help improve predictive models of key outcomes, such as local models of house prices, air quality and local development. These potential use cases are by no means exhaustive. In the MHCLG AI Lab, we are currently testing the potential of embeddings to help locate brownfield land across England. We will aim to share details of our methodology, findings and lessons learned as they emerge. Beyond geospatial AI, the Lab is testing the use of other forms of AI to help the department deliver its objectives. This includes the processing, indexing and rapid retrieval of unstructured data or documents, experimentation with AI agents, and advanced modelling techniques. For example, we are exploring potential applications to help triage incoming correspondence. If you are working on similar projects or would like to know more about our work on geospatial embeddings or AI applications in the department, then please get in touch.

In April, the Local AI team ran a series of AI ethics drop-in sessions with councils across England. The aim was simple: to understand what’s helping and what’s getting in the way of responsible AI adoption in local government. Since then, we’ve used those insights to shape our next phase of work, alongside our ongoing collaboration with the Local Government Association (LGA). This blog post shares what we heard, what we’ve learned, and what we’re doing next. ## What we set out to do The goal of Local AI’s responsible AI workstream is to help councils use AI safely, fairly and effectively by embedding ethical principles into local government and giving councils the confidence to adopt and scale AI. As a primary aim, we wanted to understand the challenges councils faced when it comes to responsible AI adoption. So, we set up 4 drop-in sessions to: * hear directly from councils about their experiences * test early ideas for our ethics workstream * start co-designing practical support for the sector ## What we heard from councils We are grateful councils took the time to engage through the drop-in sessions. We heard from 60 councils, which gave us rich insights into the challenges within the sector. There were some clear themes that stood out from all the different sessions: 1. When it comes to ethics, there are no clear minimum expectations that all councils should follow. 2. There is a lot of guidance, which can be confusing, fragmented and hard to navigate. 3. The existing guidance is too high-level and not practical enough to translate into day-to-day decisions. 4. Ethics is usually reduced to just data protection and statutory duties, and there is lack of guidance on the human behavioural impacts and workforce impacts. 5. There is lack of skills and training across councils to procure, use and govern AI tools. Through our engagement, we learnt that councils are at very different stages of AI adoption. Some are already being innovative with AI, experimenting with tools and governance approaches, while others are still exploring what AI means for their organisation. That means support needs to work across different levels of maturity. Across all sessions we ran, the same needs came up: clearer practical guidance, usable tools (not just frameworks) and opportunities to learn from peers. Importantly, people weren’t asking for more theory – they were asking for help with implementation. The drop-in sessions were designed as a co-design exercise and participants shared feedback on some of our early workstream ideas, potential deliverables and gaps in existing support. This has directly influenced what we’re focusing on next. ## What we have done since then Using what we’ve learned, we worked through a shortlisting process to prioritise a set of potential projects and build an evidence base for each. While we’re still refining the detail, the work will be centred around 3 workstreams and will explore the following ideas: 1. Moving from principles to practice – how to clearly define and develop products that set a minimum standard on responsible AI adoption 2. Knowledge sharing and peer support – how to map existing resources instead of creating new ones 3. Training and capability building – how to provide training to councillors, training alongside the roll-out of Local Transcribe and potentially more joined up pilots What we heard in April reinforced something important: this isn’t a policy problem alone – it’s a practical delivery problem. We’re keen to co-design what we produce and ensure it’s a valuable addition to the existing AI landscape. ## What we’re doing next and our collaboration with LGA Alongside the drop-in sessions, we’ve been working closely with the LGA on their Cyber, Digital, AI and Technology programme for 2026 to 2027. The aim is to make sure our work is aligned with sector priorities, and councils receive a more coherent offer of support. We’re therefore excited to announce that we’re providing grant funding to the LGA to co-deliver resources, practical guidance and tools. Some priority projects are: 1. A new AI playbook for local government – the goal is to help councils self-assess their AI adoption maturity, learn from peer examples, and align with national standards (such as the AI Playbook for the UK Government and Data and AI Ethics Framework) while addressing local needs. 2. Standard assessment templates – the aim is to consolidate data protection, equality impact and other relevant assessment requirements into a standardised template that councils can adopt and use when assessing any AI tool. 3. Expand the AI network into an AI community of practice – the plan is to expand the existing successful Local Government AI network to have more opportunity for collaborations between councils. Additionally, the Local AI team is working hard on Local Transcribe – an AI transcription and summarisation tool designed to reduce the administrative burden on frontline staff. We are continuing to build Local Transcribe with an emphasis on responsible usage – please watch out for another blog update on that in the coming weeks. ## Get involved The drop-in sessions were just the starting point. We’ll be running co-design workshops to develop and test new deliverables and keeping you updated on our progress through similar blog posts. The next series of co-design workshops running in August and September will be to understand if we can set a baseline on what responsible AI practices are across all councils with the aim to design an AI policy template. If you’d like to shape future outputs, we’d like to hear from you. Please reach out to us at LocalAI@communities.gov.uk.

Open Data Communities (ODC) is the platform the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) uses to routinely release its data outputs in fully open, accessible and reusable forms. Earlier this year, we published a blog explaining how we planned to evolve our platform to support transparency, accountability and innovation. The first part of the transformation is now complete, and we want to highlight the changes we have made. ## A modernised look and new URL Open Data Communities has moved from its legacy domain to a new service at https://open-data.communities.gov.uk. The new Open Data Communities site has a modern interface, with a design that prioritises usability and accessibility. The homepage now features clearer navigation and a more structured presentation of the datasets and tools available. Overall, the refreshed design reflects a shift towards a more user-centred experience, making the platform feel more consistent with other modern government digital services. ## A focus on machine-readable datasets One of the most significant updates is the release of the Indices of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) 2025 dataset using CSV on the Web (CSVW). Publishing IMD in CSVW combines standard CSV files with structured, machine-readable metadata. This is important because it retains the simplicity users expect from CSV, whilst the metadata adds additional context to properly interpret and reuse the data. In practice, the metadata provides: * clear definitions of fields and values, making datasets easier to understand * consistent structure across datasets, improving usability * explicit relationships between data elements, enabling linking with other sources This directly supports interoperability, allowing IMD data to be combined with other datasets more easily and reliably. It also enables both human users and automated systems to work with the data more effectively, which is increasingly important as analytical workflows become more complex and machine-driven. From a wider government perspective, adopting CSVW aligns with the recommended open standards guidance, which promotes machine-readable metadata and consistent data models. The use of CSVW helps ensure MHCLG data is: * consistent and linkable across government * easier to process into structured data models * ready for reuse in a range of tools and environments More broadly, this approach supports the government’s direction towards making data more accessible, reusable and compatible with emerging technologies such as AI, where structured metadata is essential for safe and effective reuse at scale. ## Get energy performance of buildings data: a user-focused approach to EPC data Alongside improvements to datasets, Energy Performance Certificates (EPC) open data has moved to a new dedicated service. This service replaces the Energy Performance of Buildings Data platform and introduces a more resilient and user-focused way to access EPC data. It also helps users distinguish between bulk energy performance data access through this service, and individual certificate lookup through the EPC Register. The new 'Get energy performance of buildings data' service provides: * a dedicated platform for EPC open data, separate from the wider ODC site * improved reliability and faster access to refreshed data * a clearer user experience, designed around how people access and use EPC data The service has also been developed with clearer guidance and signposting, helping users transition from the previous service and understand how to access datasets, APIs and supporting information. In May we supported: * 6,100 website users * 2219 EPC data download requests * 34.7m API requests Here’s what some of the users said: > “The service is very simple to use and there are lot of tools available for API developers.” > “I think the new beta version is fantastic, so well done and please keep it up as it's made my life so much easier.” > “The new endpoint which logs when certificates are changed or dropped is an excellent new feature.” > “All the endpoints and its output formats were explained clearly.” ## In conclusion These changes mark a clear shift in how MHCLG publishes and delivers open data. The move to CSVW for high-value datasets like IMD and the introduction of dedicated services such as Get Energy Performance Data demonstrate a focus on open standards, usability and interoperability. This ensures that data is not only accessible, but also structured in a way that supports reuse, integration and future innovation across government and beyond. As always, we welcome your feedback on these changes and any other features of Open Data Communities. Contact us at odc@communities.gov.uk.

Temporary accommodation (TA) is a vital local authority service, supporting people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness, often in very difficult circumstances. It involves difficult conversations and formal processes, often at pace. Officers gather evidence, assess eligibility, make duty decisions and produce personalised housing plans (PHPs), often while juggling large caseloads across multiple systems. Our Local AI team worked with councils in late 2025 to see this in practice. A lot of officer time goes on repetitive admin, especially drafting documents and pulling information together. Spending time with housing officers in councils, sitting in on assessment calls and observing triage brought the frontline reality into sharp focus. ## Why we focused on temporary accommodation Demand has increased significantly in recent years. More than 131,000 households were living in temporary accommodation in England in March 2025 – a record high and around 12% higher than the previous year – with over 169,000 children affected. For many, this can mean living in insecure or temporary settings, often away from support networks, while waiting for a more stable home. This sustained rise in demand is placing increasing pressure on teams delivering these services. Housing officers are managing high caseloads, complex decisions and tight statutory requirements, often across fragmented systems. ## What we learned from user research Despite differences in local policy, process and systems, we heard consistent themes across councils. * **The scale of caseloads means this is a pressing issue.** Officers spend a lot of time drafting and searching for information, so AI can help free them up to focus on work that needs human judgement. * **Councils are already innovating and experimenting with AI in homelessness services.** There’s a clear role for central government in learning from this and supporting it responsibly. * **There’s variation in systems and workflows, but the underlying decisions are broadly consistent.** That creates an opportunity for reusable approaches, if they allow for local differences. * **Integration with case management systems plays an important role in user experience.** Since PHPs sit midway through the service delivery journey, integration with existing systems is important for minimising duplication. From this, we identified personalised housing plans as a clear opportunity area – a high-volume task where time pressure often leads to generic outputs, but where better support could improve both efficiency and quality. Personalised housing plans work best when they are living documents, but they often become static, generic and procedural. Time pressure leads to heavy use of templates, with limited capacity to tailor or revisit them. We also saw two broad patterns in how councils use case management systems: * some use them across the full process, including assessments * others rely more on manual notes and use systems mainly for generating outputs This affects admin time, but not the decisions themselves. ## Incubating our ideas For a 3-month period, we tested whether AI could support parts of the workflow safely, without adding more admin work. We didn’t build a finished service. Instead, we spoke to many local authorities to understand how temporary accommodation services worked in different areas. We then honed in to work closely with 9 local authorities, combining interviews, shadowing and follow-up sessions. User research ran throughout and directly shaped what we built and how we evaluated it. Based on this research, we developed a proof of concept: the AI Case Workspace. This was a focused way to test how AI could support these tasks in practice, grounded in real work and integrated with how officers already do their jobs. Watch a short demo below: We focused on the initial assessment conversation followed by 3 common tasks: 1. drafting an initial version of a personalised housing plan from an assessment conversation 2. answering questions about a case using existing transcripts and notes 3. helping officers find similar cases when searching for information The tool was designed to support professional judgement, not replace it. Housing officers remain responsible for reviewing, editing and approving all outputs before anything is shared or used. We built in evaluation from the start, focusing on: * accuracy (Is it grounded in the source material?) * bias (Are outputs fair across different groups?) * accessibility (Is the content clear and usable?) This helped us understand what worked well, and where it needs improvement. ## What this suggests Our work suggests AI could reduce admin in parts of the process, particularly transcribing conversations and drafting PHPs. That should free up time for prevention, casework and direct engagement for housing officers. It also reinforces a few principles: * Start with real workflows, not ideal processes. * Design for variation, but look for shared patterns. * Integrate with existing systems. * Build in safeguards early. * Learn from councils already doing this work. ## What happens next Local AI is already developing Local AI Transcribe – a transcription and summarisation service for local government. Following insights collected in this work, we now plan to include homelessness services amongst the first set of housing service domains at partner councils that will receive access to Local Transcribe during private beta. The functionality of Local Transcribe will include the drafting of Personal Housing Plans, starting as structured one-off summaries and potentially looking at how they can work as live documents. We are working towards Local Transcribe being widely available to homelessness and temporary accommodation teams next year. We’re keen to keep listening, learning in the open and build with councils, not for them. We’ll be announcing more exciting work soon. We'd like to thank all local authorities who were involved in the user research. ## Get involved If you work in local government and are interested in temporary accommodation or homelessness services, AI in frontline settings, or learning from early experimentation, we would love to hear from you. We also run regular show and tells on this and other Local AI projects, to share what we are learning (including what has not worked) so others can build on it. Get in touch if you’d like to be kept in the loop – email LocalAI@communities.gov.uk. Learn more about some of our previous work exploring the use of AI to tackle homelessness and rough sleeping. Find out more information about Local AI and read about our work.

England’s planning system faces real and pressing challenges. Cross-boundary and cross-tier plan-making – where neighbouring areas co-ordinate planning for housing, infrastructure and growth – remains slow and fragmented. Meanwhile Section 106 agreements, the legal agreements that secure contributions from developers towards local infrastructure and affordable housing, can take months to negotiate, adding further delays to new homes being built. That’s why 11 consortia of technology companies and local planning or combined authorities, have been selected for Round 6 of the PropTech Innovation Fund, part of the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government's (MHCLG’s) Digital Planning Programme. Their goal is to pilot and scale digital solutions to directly target these bottlenecks. Each consortium was assessed against criteria including the potential impact of their solution, how scalable and deliverable it is, whether it works alongside existing systems and the strength of the partnerships involved. Each will receive a share of £2.4 million in grant funding, as well as dedicated mentoring and support during the 8-month programme. Promotional banner to announce PropTech Innovation Fund Round 6 finalists The PropTech Innovation Fund exists to test and scale digital innovation across the planning and housebuilding process, bringing together technology companies, planning authorities, developers, the private sector and academia to tackle the most stubborn challenges holding back housing delivery. The fund is one strand of the wider Digital Planning programme’s work which is modernising the planning system improving the quality and access of planning data and supporting faster, more efficient decision-making and plan-making. ## Scaling what works A key feature of Round 6 is the focus on scaling proven solutions. For the first time, all applications had to come from consortia including at least one PropTech company and a minimum of two local planning or combined authorities, ensuring solutions are designed and tested across a range of real planning environments from the outset, giving them the strongest possible foundation for lasting adoption. This approach also helps us to build a clearer picture of what works in practice, gathering evidence on the benefits, impacts and risks of different digital technologies, to support the adoption of tools by planning authorities nationwide. The response to the fund has been remarkable. We received 35 applications involving more than 70 planning authorities – a record level of local planning and combined authority engagement for the fund. Selected applicants have also secured more than £500,000 in match funding, reflecting genuine confidence in the potential of these pilots to deliver lasting change, beyond the grant period. ## The challenges we set This round has been shaped by a discovery phase conducted with our delivery partners PUBLIC, which identified two areas where digital innovation could have a big impact on housing delivery. Applications were sought against two challenge statements: * How can scalable digital approaches help align evidence and policies across different plan-making boundaries and tiers? * How can digital interventions reduce delays caused by Section 106 negotiations to accelerate local authority decision-making on applications? These represent some of the most stubborn blockers in the system and the selected consortia will develop interoperable platforms, built around planning authorities’ existing data environments, to directly tackle them. ## Pilots now underway The 11 selected consortia bring together a diverse mix of PropTech companies, local planning and combined authorities, housing developers and academic institutions. ### **Challenge 1: Cross-boundary and cross-tier plan-making** * Advanced Infrastructure – a scalable digital platform for cross-boundary housing, energy and infrastructure plan-making In partnership with: ​​North Somerset Council Testing partner: Bristol City Council * AiDASH – AI-powered biodiversity assessments for strategic housing and economic land availability assessments In partnership with: Lancaster City Council Testing partner: Newark and Sherwood District Council * Bioregional Development Group – Net-Zero spatial planning tool 2.0 to align evidence and policy across plan-making tiers In partnership with: Central Lincolnshire Joint Strategic Planning Committee care of North Kesteven District Council and Space Syntax Testing partner: Gloucester City Council * Blocktype – AI-powered platform for collaborative, design-led housing capacity assessments across multiple sites, scales and locations In partnership with: Liverpool City Region Combined Authority and University of Liverpool Testing partner: West Midlands Combined Authority * City Science – automating digital baselines to streamline evidence assembly In partnership with: Plymouth City Council Testing partners: Cheshire and Warrington Combined Authority, Tewkesbury Borough Council and Cheltenham Borough Council * Esri (UK) – a shared, customisable digital evidence hub for spatial plans In partnership with: Oxfordshire County Council and LANDCLAN Testing partners: Nottingham City Council, ​​Spelthorne Borough Council and Surrey County Council * Prior + Partners – digital spatial development strategy hub In partnership with: Essex County Council, Southend-on-Sea City Council and Thurrock Council Testing partner: Lancashire Combined County Authority * SimAnalytica – AI-enabled evidence base bringing together information into one digital workspace, for cross-boundary planning In partnership with: Greater Manchester Combined Authority and The Digital Task Force for Planning Testing partner: Salford City Council ### **Challenge 2: Section 106 negotiations** The following partnerships are developing AI-powered platforms to streamline S106 negotiations, agreement drafting and obligation management: * AI Gizmo In partnership with: Birmingham City Council Testing partner: Reading Borough Council , Zen Living Management Limited and University of Wolverhampton * Gpeto AI In partnership with: Uttlesford District Council Testing partner: Harlow Council * PlanningHub In partnership with: London Borough of Tower Hamlets Testing partner: London Borough of Barking and Dagenham/Be First ## What happens next Each consortium is now starting an 8-month pilot phase, working directly with their partners to test and refine their solutions in live planning environments. The fund will provide active mentorship and support throughout, with show-and-tells and networking sessions to keep the wider planning sector informed with how the pilots are progressing. Round 6 will conclude with a showcase in early 2027, where we'll share results and lessons learned. This will help inform future local planning authority and combined authority adoption decisions and contribute to the evidence base on how digital tools can support a more effective planning system. Digital tools have a critical role to play in modernising the planning system and helping authorities to manage these bottlenecks. By investing in solutions with a proven foundation and testing them at scale in real environments, the Digital Planning programme is helping to build a planning system that can deliver the homes this country needs. We'll be sharing updates on the pilots as they get under way. > Follow Digital Planning and PUBLIC on LinkedIn for regular updates, visit the PropTech Innovation Fund Round 6 website or get in touch with the team at proptechfundr6@public.io.

The Renters’ Rights Act changed the law for 11 million tenants who live in private properties in England and the 2.3 million landlords who rent them out. These were the biggest changes to private renting in nearly 40 years so we needed to make sure that landlords and tenants understood their rights and responsibilities for the reforms to be a success. To help them prepare for the changes, we had to create or update 72 pieces of guidance. Policy leads in the department worked closely with content designers from both MHCLG and the Government Digital Service (GDS) to deliver this work. You can read the guidance for tenants and landlords on GOV.UK for an overview of the changes. In this blog post, I share some valuable lessons learnt from the collaboration between content design and policy teams on this large-scale and complex project. ## Combining policy and design expertise from the start Content designers can often be pulled into a project quite late. This means the service is not necessarily getting the full value we bring, such as designing and writing with user needs in mind. But in this project, content designers were brought in right from the start as we were committed to user-centred design (UCD). This meant that we were able to produce accurate, good-quality guidance with users at its heart. We were writing and amending guidance whilst policy was being debated and refined to make sure it was ready as quickly as possible for users. Building relationships with policy leads over time also helped us to tailor our approach as each policy team worked differently. ## Understanding user needs Alongside our early research to understand how landlords and tenants access guidance and from what sources, we ran a workshop with policy leads to get them thinking about user needs and what tenants and landlords needed to know. Bringing UCD approaches into early thinking was important to frame the upcoming work. ## Pair writing The strategy for producing the guidance was to start with a blank page or a page with headings to decide on what needed to be included. Policy leads and content designers wrote together on calls. This is known as pair writing. Pair writing needs more time upfront but produces more accurate and readable content. It reduces the need for lengthy back-and-forth across multiple documents, emails and messages where meaning and detail can be lost. Working on all the guidance together meant we used consistent language across all the pieces. Here’s what Hannah, a policy colleague from the Affordability team, had to say about her experience of pair writing and UCD: > “I learned how powerful a user-centred approach really is. Policy teams often talk to stakeholders, but pair writing takes it further. It teaches you to reflect on how real people will use what you’re writing. Clarity isn’t a ‘nice-to-have’ – it’s crucial. If people can’t understand the guidance, the policy won’t deliver what it’s meant to.” ## Navigating complex challenges flexibly The bill had to be debated in the House of Commons and House of Lords before it could become an act, which means it becomes law. This meant that deadlines shifted throughout the project. We were developing the guidance while the bill was being debated and amended, so being able to work extremely flexibly was essential. This was especially true towards the end of the project, when last-minute deadlines or bill timelines impacted on ways of working with policy teams having to juggle multiple priorities alongside the guidance. We also had several layers of clearance with policy and legal teams to make sure the guidance was accurate. Changes were made and then came back to us for pair writing. The process was complex and took time. ## Publishing guidance ahead of time We published landlord guidance 6 months in advance to give users time to prepare for the changes. This meant we had to balance quick delivery of the changes with the fact that landlords, letting agents and organisations that represent landlords and tenants needed time to prepare. Local councils are responsible for the enforcement of the act, so we also had to publish guidance ahead of time to allow them to adjust their processes and prepare their teams. Publishing information about the new rules so far in advance presented unique challenges. ## Working with GOV.UK content designers from GDS As we weren’t able to publish the guidance on the GOV.UK’s pages managed by GDS before the bill became law, we used pages which are owned and edited by MHCLG. However, it was not possible to fully mirror how the content would appear on the mainstream GOV.UK pages. Content designers on the GOV.UK team (who are part of the Government Digital Service and separate from MHCLG content designers) usually aren’t involved in writing the specialist content for departments. However, in this case we shared these early drafts with them. This was because we wanted this advance guidance to match what would go on mainstream GOV.UK pages as much as possible once the policy became law on 1 May 2026. They reviewed, pair wrote and fact checked the content with policy teams, before it came back to us. The guidance then went through several stages of clearance. By working with the policy teams to create content in advance, the content designers from the GDS GOV.UK team got a deeper understanding of the rules and could develop a better strategy for the tenant content going on their GOV.UK pages in April and the landlord content moving over in May. A GOV.UK page showing the Renters' Rights Act guidance on assured periodic tenancies ## Successful collaboration on a large project As a content designer, I’m proud to have worked on a project where legislation is explained in an accessible way through guidance. The guidance has a large reach across many members of the public and I can see the impact of our work. We took a collaborative and open approach to writing guidance with policy colleagues and it paid off. * Policy and legal teams were receptive and understood the value of good content design. They gave us feedback, clarification and nuance even when we had urgent or short-notice questions. * Stakeholders working with tenants and landlords have told us the guidance is clear and easy to follow, and the online pages received unusually high usefulness ratings. * Everything was kept on track by the delivery side of policy, and content designers worked hard to get the guidance written and published in time. We couldn’t have delivered this huge piece of work without working closely with GDS and MHCLG’s internal Publishing team so here’s a big thank you to them too! ## What’s next? We’re continually reviewing and improving the published guidance through user research. There is a lot more we can learn in our department and across government from delivering guidance at such a large scale and working closely with policy teams. If you work in digital or policy in the public sector and want to know more about how we designed and delivered this project, join us at Services Week 2026. Register to attend our session on Friday, 3 July, to learn more about our user research and content management systems, and explore the detail behind our work. Learn more about the MHCLG digital strategy, which highlights the benefits of embedding digital in policy to deliver more responsive, user-friendly policies, and improved outcomes for citizens.

GovPrint is a cross-government cloud-based service that lets civil servants securely print documents from any enabled location, using a single account and building pass. The shared service, managed and delivered by the Government Property Agency (GPA), is a greener, flexible, money-saving solution which saves departments the time and cost entailed in buying and managing their own print process. When the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government's (MHCLG’s) printing contract reached the end of its term, it made perfect sense for MHCLG Digital to investigate how the GovPrint solution could benefit us. Reducing our department’s environmental footprint is part of our wider commitment to sustainability. GovPrint offered a practical way to support that alongside improving efficiency and reducing costs. ## What we did Our Digital team deployed GovPrint printers across 18 MHCLG locations during 2025. To support the transition from the previous system, members of our Live Services team attended sites in person, engaging directly with colleagues to assist with user registration to the new solution and to provide a quick run-through of the features. We provided step-by-step guidance and supporting materials on our departmental intranet and published regular updates as things progressed and more sites were being enabled with GovPrint. In addition, local office site contacts played a key role in promoting awareness of the new devices and encouraging adoption across their respective locations. The implementation of the solution was quick and easy, and any issues that were encountered were very quickly resolved to enable us to reach our deadlines. A number of our core arm's length bodies have also now taken the GovPrint solution supported by MHCLG. ## A year on from implementation A year on from implementation, GovPrint is now fully adopted across MHCLG, with colleagues having embraced the new service as part of day-to-day working. Our Live Services team continues to handle user queries and provide support via our service desk, where we have first-line support available to colleagues across MHCLG, to ensure consistent assistance across all locations. Our team also has access to a centralised management portal, enabling real-time visibility of device activity. This supports a proactive approach to identifying and resolving potential issues before they impact users, which results in reduced downtime and service desk calls. Service performance is monitored through regular service review meetings, where volumetrics, ongoing issues and continuous improvement initiatives are discussed. These also include updates on sustainability, including informing senior stakeholders to track reforestation progress associated with printing activity. ## Improved outcomes The service has reduced our team’s administrative burden significantly. It is also delivering savings by avoiding a costly procurement exercise and contributing to economies of scale. Further benefits include a better user experience, notably as the service allows colleagues to print in any government building using GovPrint, even in areas where MHCLG does not have a presence or equipment, using a common interface and familiar screens. GovPrint devices also connect via GovWifi, which is another shared service. The ability to use other GovPrint devices allows for greater resilience, without the need for additional devices; in fact, we have reduced our fleet due to the rollout of GovPrint. > “As more departments use GovPrint and become less reliant on printing, printers can be returned and reused elsewhere across government. GovPrint is currently reusing around 7 devices each month, reducing the need to buy new printers as the service grows.” **– Keith Houghton, Product Owner, Government Property Agency** ## Turning paper into trees through our GovPrint solution One of GovPrint’s valuable features allows us to link our paper use to a sustainability platform that automatically offsets our paper consumption by supporting certified reforestation projects around the world. The cloud-based platform tracks paper use across an organisation and converts it into real trees. It works by measuring how much paper we consume, calculating the forest impact of that consumption, and then automatically planting trees through reforestation projects to offset it. There’s nothing to install and no extra steps for colleagues – it runs in the background, quietly turning our everyday printing into something with a genuine positive impact. The scheme is fully automated and verified, so we can be confident that the trees being planted in our name are real, monitored and accounted for, and every project is audited by third-party organisations and aligns with UN Sustainable Development Goals. ## Showcasing tangible outcomes from our day-to-day operations By participating in this scheme through our GovPrint solution, we have a practical, measurable way to take responsibility for our paper consumption – not just reducing it but actively doing something about the impact it has. MHCLG has already contributed to the reforestation of 112 trees, showcasing a tangible outcome from our day-to-day operations. These numbers also serve as a reminder that the choices we make in the office have a real-world ripple effect. The scheme offsets the paper we use when printing, but it works best as a complement to reducing consumption, not a replacement for it. ## Printing less The single best thing we can do for the environment is to print less. Every sheet of paper saved (we use recycled paper) means fewer trees harvested in the first place. Our team is keen to make sure colleagues across our department know that where printing is genuinely necessary, there are still ways to reduce its impact: * Print double-sided and in black and white where possible (this is GovPrint’s default setting across all printers). * Use digital documents instead of printed copies when you can. * Make use of local recycling schemes to dispose of any paper. With GovPrint, uncollected jobs are automatically deleted, further saving paper and reducing our carbon footprint. ## What’s next Our team is continuously exploring more ways to make our IT estate more efficient and sustainable, including utilising more of the GPA services on offer, to help with standardisation and reduce additional support required. We are also looking at reducing waste in packaging and CO2 emissions from deliveries and collections of equipment, as well as ensuring the social value criterion in our tenders (economic, social and environmental wellbeing) is easily measurable so that we can better evaluate how a service or product makes a positive impact. If you work in IT across government and would like more information about what we discussed in this post, get in touch with the Live Services team. Find out more about GovPrint. Find out more about the work of our Live Services team and how we aim to deliver social value in everything we do.

The Digital Connect team (formerly Common Tools) in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) is responsible for building standardised, reliable and reusable tools and platforms for everyone in the department. We help teams to be more efficient, deliver quickly and reduce operational costs. This post explains how we’ve built ‘Managing Local Conversations’ (MLC), a shared internal service that supports smarter, faster and more collaborative ways of working by breaking down silos, standardising processes, and making information easily accessible to colleagues who need it. ## The problem to solve Across our department, teams speak every day with local authorities, private and third sector providers, communities and partners. These conversations are valuable, but different teams record engagement in different ways. Information lives across different systems, spreadsheets, inboxes or notebooks. As a result, insights from engagement can sometimes be hard to find, reuse or build on. This can potentially result in duplicated effort, missed connections, or reduced ability to see the full picture. Our user research has showed that our teams regularly face a common set of challenges: * engagement data is fragmented across teams and tools * it’s hard to see who has spoken to whom, and when * insight may be lost when people move roles or leave the department * teams may repeat outreach due to the lack of shared view of engagement activity So, we built Managing Local Conversations (MLC) to facilitate joined-up work and enhance our ability to use engagement insights to inform policy and delivery. ## So what exactly is MLC? The homepage of the Managing Local Conversations service. MLC is a shared service for recording and understanding external engagement. It gives policy, delivery, sponsorship and engagement teams a single place to log contacts and conversations. By bringing information together, MLC helps teams to: * see existing relationships before starting new conversations * reuse insight instead of starting from scratch * build continuity over time * treat engagement insight as organisational knowledge, not personal notes MLC is not about changing why teams engage, it’s about making existing conversations visible, reusable and more valuable. Our work also supports the efficient adoption of AI tools in our department, which, as we know, rely on accessible, consistent and quality data and processes to deliver their full value. Our vision is for MLC to be: > “a single service for all teams to manage their external contacts and conversations, enabling collaborative and modern ways of working for a data-driven MHCLG” MLC provides a single, department-wide contact book that brings engagement information into one place. Teams can filter and view data in ways that make sense for their work, using tags to record insight consistently. Conversations can be imported directly from Outlook, reducing manual effort, and built‑in Copilot support helps users to find and summarise past interactions, with privacy and compliance designed in. > “For a busy digital transformation programme with local government and other stakeholders like ours, co-ordination is essential to make sure our projects and resources are deployed most effectively and efficiently. Managing Local Conversations is helping our programme to spend less time making and updating contact lists manually or sharing intel verbally and more time strengthening the relationships we need to enable the delivery of 1.5m homes.” **– Digital Planning team, MHCLG** > “MLC has allowed me to easily and quickly record readouts from meetings, store important documents, and list important contacts quickly and easily, helping myself and the team to manage important information on Pride in Place Programme neighbourhoods in a clear and consistent manner. This has meant that seniors have been able to quickly access information on places and has ensured institutional memory of what has happened in a place – this will be crucial to the success of a programme that spans 10 years.” **– Charles Farrer, Pride in Place Programme, MHCLG** ## Why we built MLC ourselves We looked at existing tools, but none met our needs without significant compromise. Most would have added another system alongside those already in use, rather than reducing duplication. Building MLC in-house allowed us to design a service around real user needs, while avoiding a growing landscape of slightly different but largely similar systems across the department. Owning the service also means we can move quickly. We can respond directly to user feedback, make changes as needs evolve, and improve the service without relying on lengthy procurement cycles. This helps us deliver value sooner and keep the service aligned with how teams actually work. Building MLC ourselves has also proved better value for money. By consolidating tools and avoiding multiple licences and support contracts, we reduce ongoing costs and deliver efficiencies for the department. From the start, we designed MLC to scale. It's built on Power Platform as a model-driven Power App-based solution, with a Microsoft Dataverse database - allowing the service to grow as more teams join while remaining stable and secure. Using the Microsoft platform also makes it easier to integrate with other corporate systems and the Microsoft 365 suite and simplifies assurance processes such as cyber security and data protection by relying on well‑understood, compliant technology. ## How we’ve been building the platform We’ve been building MLC in line with the GOV.UK Service Standard as well as the objectives and principles of MHCLG’s Digital Strategy: * We work in agile ways, releasing improvements regularly and learning from each iteration. Security, accessibility and compliance are built in from the outset. * We start with user needs. Continuous user research shapes what we build and what we prioritise next, ensuring the service focuses on real problems rather than assumptions. * We also design for fairness and access. MLC provides a shared platform that works for teams of different sizes and functions, reducing reliance on local tools or personal systems. * Finally, we plan for change. MLC is designed to evolve, with a roadmap shaped by ongoing research, feedback and changing organisational priorities. ## What’s next We’re continuing to improve MLC based on user feedback. We’ve already introduced the ability to send bulk emails, thus reducing manual effort, and next we’re looking to integrate with GOV.UK Notify, which will further user ability to send mass communications. We’re also improving onboarding and training to help teams get value sooner, alongside clearer dashboards and reporting to make engagement insight easier to understand and act on. ## Want to know more? While MLC was built in MHCLG, the challenge it addresses is shared across government. We hope our learnings are useful to others thinking about how to manage engagement insight more effectively, and we’re keen to learn from you too. If you’ve built something similar in your organisation, we’d love to hear what’s worked, and what hasn’t: Get in touch with our team at DigitalConnect@communities.gov.uk. We’ll continue to share our progress on the blog, including what we’re learning from users and how we’re balancing agile delivery with supporting a live service.

Hi, we are Jen Oliver and Liz Owen, job-sharing Deputy Director of the Elections Digital team at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG). Now is a great time to build your career with us. We are developing and improving our existing portfolio of services and products, which are used 365 days a year to enable people to participate in the UK’s democracy. We are passionate about designing and delivering excellent digital services which support citizens to exercise their right to vote. Our focus is on delivering the government’s priorities for elections, particularly on extending the vote to 16 and 17-year-olds, and increasing the number of people who are correctly registered to vote. ## We are hiring We have new delivery, product and user-centred design roles available in our growing digital team, with more due to be advertised over the coming days and weeks. In addition, recruitment for our first tranche of development roles is due to launch in the coming months. Visit our job portal for details about each of the vacancies and keep an eye out for additional roles opening in the coming days and weeks. ## What our Elections Digital team does Millions of people use our elections products and services each year and they are critical to the successful running of elections in the UK. We have a portfolio of 8 products and services, including the flagship Register to vote service. Over the last 5 years, we’ve rapidly expanded our portfolio, and electors can now apply online for postal votes, proxy votes and photo identification to use in polling stations. We also have a product we have built for electoral teams in local authorities to support electoral administration. Alongside our portfolio, our team has also grown to enable us to deliver more of our work to improve and develop services in house – better for the taxpayer and better for our users. We are looking to build on this and continue to develop our team this year. We want to ensure our services are simpler, clearer and faster for everyone, whilst building on the excellent standards we’ve already achieved. If you are thinking of joining us, it’s an exciting time for Elections Digital services. ## How we work Our multidisciplinary in-house digital team is the driving force behind the development and delivery of excellent elections services for users, as well as the day-to-day operational running of those services. And this year, we are also aiming to bring some more technical roles in house, working alongside our existing external partners. We are part of the Elections Directorate, which has overall responsibility for all things related to elections in central government. Within the directorate, we have sister divisions responsible for policy, strategy and project management, and work closely with these colleagues. One of the things we love about our role is the fact that we’re part of a single team with policy and programme colleagues and have the opportunity to directly influence thinking on policy and legislation based on our users’ needs. We are flexible in delivery approaches, using Agile methodology for digital delivery and waterfall project management for the wider programme activities. > "Elections offers variety and keeps me on my toes with new work and technical challenges to get my teeth into. There’s a clear appreciation of the value that my profession, alongside others, contributes to delivering the best possible outcomes for users. My team genuinely feels like 'my team' – being here gives me a sense of belonging and support that goes well beyond the job itself." **– Gary, Lead Business Analyst** Our team of enthusiastic and highly-skilled digital specialists is geographically dispersed across the UK. Hybrid working gives us the flexibility to meet in the office or collaborate online wherever we are in the country. Many of us have flexible working patterns to achieve a healthy work/life balance and accommodate commitments outside of work. We value each opinion and understand that we need a diverse range of skills and viewpoints to ensure that we represent the communities we serve. It's really important to us that this is a team where everyone feels that their ideas and constructive challenge are valued and welcomed. Good ideas can come from anywhere and are more likely to come from those closest to the problems and to our users. Our teams have a high degree of trust to deliver what’s needed, and we ensure that we offer individuals a challenge and the opportunity to develop themselves and their skills. ## Our work matters because democracy matters Elections is a brilliant area to work in – our work matters because democracy matters. We need to make sure that our current and future services are trusted, secure and meet the need of all our users both in and outside the UK. If you have any questions on the roles we are recruiting, please contact digitaldatajobs@communities.gov.uk. Find out more about the work of Elections Digital team on the MHCLG Digital blog. Learn how you can progress your career in digital and data in MHCLG.

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) is the first government department signed up to the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology's (DSIT’s) IT Reuse for Good charter – and we’re already making a difference. In this blog post, we share how old tech devices can provide quality second lives to digitally excluded people who urgently need them, and what our Live Services team has learnt on the journey. When colleagues return an old laptop or device to IT, they might not think too much about what happens next. But, thanks to a recent approach from our team, devices that are no longer suitable for reuse or reallocation within our department are now finding their way into the hands of children and families who need them most. ## From secure disposal to social good Over the years, our team has continuously committed to, and refined, its approach for the sustainable disposal of old IT equipment while maintaining a cost-neutral model all along. When DSIT launched the IT Reuse for Good charter in June 2025, we were delighted to sign up and be the first department represented. ## Making a difference The impact is already being felt. At the start of this year, we sent 60 laptops to the Digital Poverty Alliance – our largest donation to date. These devices were shipped to children from disadvantaged backgrounds. > “We are so grateful to the people at MHCLG for donating these laptops. The young people these have gone to have already told us the difference that they have made – to accessing their education, looking for work and finding support for mental health, as well as much more.” > > **Elizabeth Anderson, Chief Executive Officer, Digital Poverty Alliance** We’ve also donated devices to Kinship, the charity supporting kinship carers across England and Wales, and funded 6 specialist UV-C charging cabinets for London NHS Trusts. These cabinets help reduce bacteria on visitors’ devices and staff handhelds – a practical contribution to infection control on hospital wards. ## What families have said Behind every donation is a family whose life just got a little easier. Here’s what some of them had to say. > “Now that she has a larger screen, my daughter is able to join her hospital Zoom calls more easily, which used to be difficult on my small phone.” > “As a mum, I feel since Covid that laptops, computers and printers are needed for schoolwork. It just seems like everyday life now, and if you don’t have a computer, it puts the child in a difficult position. This laptop helps massively.” > “My daughter is so excited to be able to do homework on a laptop and not have to use her phone. I’ve told her that it is her own laptop – it’s something that is just hers, and she has been counting the days since we received an email from the couriers. Today it has arrived and she’s going to be the happiest child ever! Thank you, it’s so appreciated.” ## What we learnt along the way ### Joining the scheme is easy The sign-up process was easy, and ongoing biannual reporting is straightforward and quick to complete. Consider the following tips to ensure everything runs smoothly: * Find a charity that can take larger numbers of devices in one go and deal with the onward supply to the end users, so that you do not end up creating an admin burden trying to organise small donations. * Speak to your existing IT Asset Disposition (ITAD) supplier about possible options they may have to assist with this process, including any charity partners they have already, and how they can help you get moving on your journey. ### The way staff look after their work device directly affects whether it can have a second life We can only donate Grade B devices – those in cosmetically excellent condition, with at least 75% battery health and no physical damage. The better people care for their laptop, the higher the chance it ends up helping a child access their homework rather than heading for recycling. So, make sure to remind your staff about a few simple tips that can make a difference: * Keep your device clean. * Use a protective bag when travelling (and where they can order one if available). * Treat it with the same care you’d give a personal device. * Return replaced devices promptly – the sooner they’re back, the sooner they can be assessed for donation. * Line managers – make sure leavers’ equipment is collected quickly so devices don’t sit unused. ## What’s next for us Our team is continuously exploring more ways to get value from old IT and AV equipment, with a focus on sustainable reuse wherever possible. As more devices come through the process, we’re looking to build longer-term partnerships with charities like the Digital Poverty Alliance. Our commitment to this charter is a reminder that small changes in how we manage everyday resources can add up to something meaningful, and we hope this inspires others. ## Join the IT Reuse for Good charter The IT Reuse for Good charter promotes a ‘reuse first’ approach to IT assets (like laptops and smartphones) and is an opportunity for organisations to give their devices a second life by refurbishing and gifting them to someone who is digitally excluded. Learn more about the scheme and how your organisation can join.

We have now laid regulations in Parliament to introduce mandatory data standards for Plans – marking a significant moment for planning in England. This is the first time the planning data powers in the Levelling Up and Regeneration Act 2023 have been used in this way, an important step towards an open, faster, data-driven planning system. This is an important milestone – not just technically but also in how we work. It is a concrete step towards a planning system that works better for everyone – local communities, planning authorities, developers, and anyone with a stake in where and how homes and infrastructure are built. ## What are we doing? These regulations make it mandatory for local planning authorities (LPAs) that are creating local plans, minerals and waste plans or supplementary plans, under the new plan-making system, to publish their Plan timetables and housing requirement in a standardised format. The data standard, and guidance for how to follow it, are set out on the ‘publish your plan data’ page and explain how information, such as dates, plan names and numbers, must be published. The ‘check and provide’ service on the Planning Data platform enables LPAs to check their data and receive immediate feedback on whether it meets the new standards. Until now, up-to-date information on plan-making progress – including how many homes each local planning authority needs to plan for – has been hard to find. It has sometimes been out of date on a council’s website or buried in lengthy PDF documents, making it difficult to access and preventing us from having the open, transparent and efficient planning system we need. ## Why this matters? It is important that all LPAs record and publish their data in the same way. When they do, we can have a clear, national picture of plan-making progress and housing ambitions across England. Timetable data will show the status of local plan preparation nationwide while standardised plan data will give us a clear, consistent view of required housing numbers for each local plan. This transparency will directly support the government's commitment to delivering 1.5 million new homes this Parliament. Consistent, open data will also make it easier for citizens and organisations to bring together and compare planning information from different authorities. And open data creates opportunities for new tools, products and services that can make planning clearer and more accessible for everyone. ## A collaborative effort This has been a genuinely collaborative journey. The Digital Planning programme’s planning data and policy, engagement and legislation teams have worked in lockstep with colleagues across the department, including the local plans policy and data teams and legal and parliamentary teams. Extensive user research and testing with local planning authorities, has also been important. We have tested the data standards with users to gather early feedback and make improvements before publishing. Several LPAs who will soon be drafting their local plan under the new plan-making system have tested the standards, giving us confidence that what we are asking is practical and workable. Together we've turned a policy ambition into something real. ## The first step in a longer journey This is the first step in our plan to standardise planning data more broadly. Data standards are an enabler of wider planning reform, helping us deliver the new policy changes efficiently and ensuring our overall policy ambitions are achieved more quickly. Higher quality, openly published data will help to drive real efficiencies – providing us with a national picture of plans and housing delivery, unlocking new tools and services and supporting LPAs as they make the transition to the new plan-making system. It also opens up opportunities for communities and organisations to engage with planning in new and more meaningful ways. ## Next steps We will continue this work in close partnership with our policy colleagues at MHCLG, LPAs and the wider planning sector. If you’re an LPA bringing forward a plan under the new plan-making system, we encourage you to follow the guidance and publish your data to the approved standard. Doing so will help communities, the development sector and innovators find and use planning information easily and ensure you are well prepared as you produce your plan. Share your experience of meeting the approved data standard by emailing digitalland@communities.gov.uk – your feedback helps us continue to improve. If you would like to be involved in our ongoing work on data standards, looking at planning application submission and decision data specifications, join the data standards community. The next community session is on 27 May 2026, at 10.30am. To see what we are working on next explore our public project board to follow our progress and what we’re looking to address. > This work is part of the Digital Planning programme. For more information about the Digital Planning programme, follow us on LinkedIn to stay connected, and subscribe to our newsletter for the latest updates.

England's planning authorities hold a wealth of information that applicants, software developers and researchers use in the planning process. Decades of valuable planning information – conservation areas, Article 4 Directions, Tree Preservation Orders (TPOs) – are, however, locked in scanned PDFs, archived maps and paper documents, organised differently by each authority and largely invisible to the tools and systems that could benefit from using it. Good planning data is foundational to everything we are trying to achieve in the Digital Planning programme. The government has committed to delivering 1.5 million new homes this Parliament and we need faster planning decisions. This is only achievable with a planning system that is faster, more transparent and data-driven. But a faster, better-equipped planning system depends on data that is standardised, accessible and machine-readable. That is the problem we are trying to solve with an AI-tool called Extract. ## What Extract will deliver Extract is an AI-powered tool, developed by the Ministry of Housing and Local Government's (MHCLG's) Digital Planning Programme, in partnership with the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology’s Incubator for Artificial Intelligence (i.AI). It converts historic planning maps and documents into standardised, usable planning data. Tasks that currently take planning and Geographic Information System (GIS) officers hours to complete manually are being done in minutes. For senior leaders in local planning authorities, the strategic case is straightforward. Extract will: ### Reduce the data burden on planning teams * Structuring planning records into useable, standardised data is time-consuming, technically demanding work. Extract can help with this process, freeing up officer capacity for higher-value tasks. ### Improve transparency and public access * When planning records are easy to find and understand online, applicants and members of the public can identify the right locations and policies before applications are made, reducing errors, delays and unnecessary back-and-forth. ### Power the next generation of planning tools * Consistent, machine-readable data is the building block for modern digital planning products like PlanX, BOPS and the Digital Site Register, and for the AI models that will help the planning system scale to meet housing and infrastructure demand. ### Contribute to a national dataset * The data each authority generates through Extract feeds into the national Planning Data platform, which already publishes open, standardised data from over 100 councils. Every authority that makes their data available through the platform, strengthens the shared foundation everyone can then benefit from. The case for this is already being made – in March, the Planning Data platform saw nearly 7,000 users – our highest monthly figure since reintroducing analytics, with growing repeat usage focused on key development datasets that are essential to effective decision-making, including conservation areas, listed buildings, brownfield land and TPOs. As a minimum viable product, Extract will support the digitisation of this data, converting existing digital documents (including scanned PDFs) into reliable, exportable data that can be integrated into geospatial analysis and digital planning tools. ## What have we been doing since last summer Following the Prime Minister’s announcement of Extract at London Tech Week in June 2025 and our last blog post explaining how the tool works, our focus has been to move from a working prototype into structured testing with real planning authorities. This has meant visiting councils, observing how planning and GIS teams work in practice, and iterating the product based on what we saw to improve it and make sure we have an AI-enabled service that is trustworthy and usable for planning authorities. We’ve approached this in the same way we build other government digital services: start with the riskiest assumptions, run structured user research, and iterate based on evidence. Simon Millier, Head of Technology and Design, Adur and Worthing Councils, said: > "We explored using the Extract AI tool to support our Tree Preservation Order plotting. We met with the product team who kindly made the visit down to Adur and Worthing's Town Hall to test the tool with our own data, giving us the opportunity to provide feedback directly to the team. It was really valuable for us to be a small part of such an innovative and exciting project. It shows real promise for substantial time-saving." Alongside user research, we’ve continued improving the tool itself so it can be used more reliably and efficiently. The technology itself has also advanced significantly since last summer. The tool now handles complex maps more reliably, supports larger document volumes, and includes features that allow users to review, check and correct outputs against original source material - essential for building the confidence that any authority will need before using extracted data in live planning work. ## What we’ve learned along the way Turning a fast-moving AI proof of concept into a government service is not straightforward. The biggest early lesson was that real progress came when our team went into local planning authorities and worked alongside planning and GIS officers directly, understanding how data is created in practice. Trust in outputs has been central to everything. Extract is only useful if planners are confident that what it produces meets the quality standards they would apply themselves. So we have worked at a small scale, iterating on findings, and making quality a prerequisite for any wider rollout rather than something to address later. We have also been deliberate about what Extract is and isn't. It supports officers – it does not replace them. It helps to create standardised data faster and more efficiently - but officers review and confirm its accuracy before it is used. That verified data can then be relied upon to inform decision-making. And alongside the visible product work, we have completed the less glamorous but essential steps any government digital service requires – an accessibility audit, terms of use, and privacy and security approvals and preparing the technical infrastructure required to operate the service on MHCLG’s systems. ## So what next? We are on track to make Extract available to all local planning authorities very soon. To get there, we are currently conducting final testing with a small number of local planning authorities ahead of the wider rollout. ## Working in the open If you want to follow our progress as Extract develops, our weeknotes are the best place to go – here we share what we're working on, what we're learning, and what's coming next. > For more information about the Digital Planning programme, follow us on LinkedIn to stay connected, and subscribe to our newsletter for the latest updates.

New technology is reshaping how planning is delivered – improving efficiency, transparency and outcomes for communities. 3 out of the 4 finalists in this year’s Planning Awards’ use of digital technology in planning category, are projects funded by the Digital Planning programme, demonstrating how targeted planning technology pilots, based in live settings, are showing real results in practice. The PropTech (property technology) Innovation Fund is a flagship part of the Digital Planning programme, supporting local authorities and industry to test and adopt digital tools that modernise planning and accelerate the delivery of 1.5 million homes. It is the UK Government’s largest PropTech initiative and has been recognised by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) as best practice in public sector innovation. Each shortlisted project has been developed in close collaboration with planners, built around real workload pressures and tested on live planning activity. The outcomes aren’t just proof of concept but already changing how planning teams are working day to day. ## AI-assisted application processing Leeds City Council and Xylo have piloted Xylo Core, an AI-enabled tool which helps planning officers validate and process planning applications, assisting them to check documents, identify relevant planning history and policies, and draft report sections for them to review and approve before they use them. It enables officers to spend more of their time on professional judgement rather than administrative processing. Part of the PropTech Innovation Challenge, the tool has been co-designed directly with planning officers, reflecting real workflows and day-to-day practice. Tested on live planning applications over a 3-month period, it has demonstrated average time savings of around 1 day a week for officers, showing the potential for responsible AI to improve public services. **Helen Cerroti, Team Leader (Business and Systems Support), at Leeds City Council, said:** > “We’re extremely proud to have the Leeds City Council and Xylo partnership shortlisted for the Planning Awards. This recognition reflects a genuinely collaborative, co-designed approach between our planning officers and Xylo, focused on solving real planning challenges rather than technology for its own sake. By streamlining administrative tasks and improving access to planning data, the tool is already delivering practical benefits for our service, enhancing decision making and giving officers more time to focus on complex work. Being shortlisted is a real boost for the teams involved and reinforces the value of partnership-based innovation in local government.” ## AI-powered consultation summarisation Greater Cambridge Shared Planning – the joint planning service for Cambridge City and South Cambridgeshire District Councils – partnered with the University of Liverpool to develop PlanAI, an artificial intelligence tool designed to handle one of the most time-consuming tasks in plan-making – processing the large volumes of responses submitted during public consultations. Built using a substantial dataset of historic consultation responses, the tool breaks down and summarises the feedback more efficiently, enabling officers to spend their time analysing the feedback and supporting greater citizen engagement. Early results saw the tool successfully summarise 3 planning consultations, in 16 minutes – a task that took 18.5 hours to do manually. That is a 98% efficiency saving and a clear indication of how AI can support planning teams with their workloads. **Terry de Sousa, Planning Policy and Strategy Team Leader, Greater Cambridge Shared Planning, said:** > “This achievement reflects a collaborative effort across the public, private and academic sectors, and is already delivering tangible benefits by accelerating how public feedback on planning policy documents is summarised. PlanAI is purpose-built for planning, trained on thousands of past submissions and developed in collaboration with our planning officers, ensuring outputs that are tailored to our needs and enabling our planning officers to focus on technical, rather than administrative, tasks.” ## Transforming site assessment for a new Local Plan Plymouth City Council partnered with Urban Intelligence to modernise their site assessment process as work began on a new Local Plan. Using PlaceMaker’s site analysis and dashboards, officers have been able to assess potential development sites more consistently and transparently. They can now carry out site suitability assessments independently – bringing together constraints mapping, land ownership data and automated density calculations in a single platform, rather than navigating multiple disparate systems. The specialist site assessment tool has transformed the council's approach to identifying development opportunities, enabling proactive engagement with landowners to identify future development opportunities. The result is a planning service less dependent on specialist Geographic Information System (GIS) staff and better equipped to maintain up-to-date evidence throughout the Local Plan process. The project illustrates how digital platforms can support proactive spatial planning and provide a clearer evidence base for strategic decisions. **Ed Mannings from the Strategic Planning Team, at Plymouth City Council, said:** > “Plymouth City Council are delighted our partnership work with Urban Intelligence has been recognised by initial shortlisting in the Planning Awards. The PropTech Innovation Fund has been critical to enabling planning officers the time and resource to modernise past planning practices through the co-development and use of digital tools which will be the foundation of our strategic work and be critical to meeting the new 30-month timetable for plan making.” ## What these projects tell us Together, the finalists illustrate how digital technology is no longer an aspiration for planning; it is part of how planning is now being done. These digital tools are all freeing up capacity by supporting or automating data-heavy, time consuming tasks – managing application workloads, processing consultation responses and assessing development sites. That gives planners back time for the work that requires professional expertise and local knowledge. There are improvements too for consistency and accountability, benefiting both officers and the communities they serve. With the government's ambition to deliver 1.5 million homes in this Parliament, the planning system is under real pressure to help make that happen. These projects show how digital innovation is a serious part of the answer. ## PropTech Innovation Fund Round 6 Applications for Round 6 of the PropTech Innovation Fund are now open. With £2.4 million for up to 12 pilots, this round focuses on two challenge areas: plan-making and Section 106 agreements. We’re looking for mixed partnerships to apply – bringing together technology companies, local authorities, the development industry, community organisations, and academia – to test real solutions in real places, from summer 2026 to early 2027. All consortia must include local planning authorities (LPAs) – with dedicated funding available for LPAs who take part. Applications close on 29 April.

In response to Russia’s full scale illegal invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the government launched the Homes for Ukraine Sponsorship Scheme to enable Ukrainians fleeing the conflict to find safe accommodation with UK hosts. Delivering this scheme at national scale required a digital service to be designed, built and operated at extreme pace, while handling highly sensitive personal and safeguarding data. You can read more about how our team applied digital principles and innovation to effectively respond to this crisis in this case study. The initial emergency response relied on an existing supplier-owned platform. However, longer term, we wanted to replace the platform with a more flexible technology solution, enabling the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) to save significant support costs, control the system data and code, and ensure the service met high standards of security, resilience and usability. In the summer of 2024, we started building our own system for managing Homes for Ukraine data. We needed a system that would provide service continuity and secure data sharing between central government, local authorities and devolved administrations, with more sustainable running costs. We chose to build ‘Share Homes for Ukraine data’ (or ‘Share’ for short) in-house, giving MHCLG full ownership to adapt the system based on user needs and expand to further use cases. ## Challenges ### Time constraint and scope We had less than a year to build the system and migrate 3 years of operational data, which was a very ambitious timeline. We worked with our operational teams and a test group of local authority users to define our minimum viable product, continually tweaking our scope as we progressed and refined our delivery estimates, to ensure we could deliver Share on time with only the essential features needed for day 1. ### Security Given the sensitivity of the data, safeguarding and data security were paramount in our architectural and design choices. We used a phased approach to data migration to allow for multiple rounds of quality assurance. ### User-centred design at pace We wanted to make a system that met users’ needs first time, was intuitive and easy to use, but we had limited time and access to our primary users. We weren’t starting from scratch, as we had a bank of 3 years of research from running Homes for Ukraine. We also leant on the GOV.UK Design system as a template, knowing that this is extensively researched and accessible by default, and focussed our limited user research time on our most complex journeys. ### Change management and training We knew this would be a big change for our local authority users, and we did not want to lose the trust and good relationships we’d built over the previous 3 years working together. We held drop-in sessions over the summer to share progress, demonstrate features and answer any questions. We also created written and video guidance, and both phone and online support mechanisms to ensure our users felt supported through the transition. ## Successes We delivered Share on time in September 2025 and exited our contract with our supplier. Moving to this in-house model is already saving MHCLG millions of pounds a year in running costs. We are also preparing to onboard local authorities in Scotland and Wales, who used their own systems rather than our previous system, making further savings and reducing duplication across the public sector. Our users report that Share is simpler to use and more accessible than its predecessor. They say: > “It’s easier to navigate than the previous system, safeguarding checks are easier to complete and visualise where cases have outstanding issues.” > > “it’s a very user-friendly system, much easier to navigate.” Launch was only the start of our journey, and we have been making continual releases since September. We have improved stability and performance, made adjustments to make the system more accessible, iterated existing features based on feedback, and built some new features. Our team (myself included) have learnt a great deal about building, migrating and supporting a system of this scale and complexity. It is a rare and privileged opportunity to work on a project that has such significance: generating real-world impact by continuing to support Ukrainians fleeing war; creating an asset that has potential for further reuse across government; and setting a precedent that it is possible to move a complex live system into a sustainable in-house set up and reduce our reliance on external suppliers. A screenshot of Share Homes for Ukraine data's homepage ## What’s next? We have built a brilliant multidisciplinary team of dedicated professionals with product, delivery, user-centred design, business analysis and development skills, and we’re sticking together to keep improving Share. We will continue to support our primary use case in Homes for Ukraine, simplifying and iterating our processes and technology based on user needs. We are striving to become a ‘best in class’ live service, providing timely and expert support to our users. We are preparing to take Share to a live service assessment later this year to measure our progress and get feedback from expert peers. Most excitingly, we are starting to explore opportunities to reuse Share in new service areas. We will be speaking to colleagues in MHCLG and across government to see where there are overlaps in needs and capabilities, to hopefully accelerate other teams’ progress and prevent the need for other services to start from scratch. > Watch this space for more updates, and if you’re interested in using Share in your service, please get in touch at: coco.chan@communities.gov.uk. Find guidance on Data sharing: Homes for Ukraine on GOV.UK. Read previous blog posts from the Homes for Ukraine Digital team.

Dozens of local planning authorities (LPAs) are now publishing their planning data openly and modernising their planning services – but what does that actually mean in practice? Some LPAs are using the data to transform the experience for applicants who can submit planning applications through modern, data-driven software like PlanX, codesigned with LPAs. When applications are submitted correctly the first time, everyone wins. Others are focusing on improvements to their back-office systems, making efficiency gains behind the scenes, which also benefits citizens. And many are doing both. The results are clear. PlanX draws on open planning data to automatically handle routine enquiries and reduce invalid submissions, significantly cutting down the volume of calls planning departments used to receive. Meanwhile improvements to back-office systems help to smooth out and speed up the processing of planning applications. Together, these changes free up planning teams to focus on the work that genuinely needs their skills and expertise – processing major applications, supporting housing delivery and the government's mission to build 1.5 million new homes. ## How PlanX is changing the planning process One of the most popular services on PlanX is ‘Find out if you need planning permission’. This allows homeowners and their agents to find out whether the development work they want to do requires planning permission or not. Finding an answer to that question could require many searches, an email or a phone call to an LPA but PlanX can accurately answer this question in a few minutes giving homeowners and agents the clarity they need quickly. PlanX is currently being used by 16 LPAs and supports all statutory application types. Many of the LPAs have also gone further and added other discretionary services, to help manage some of the processes they are dealing with the most. LPAs have already created 56 different services among them, including ‘Apply for pre-application advice’ and ‘Report a planning breach’, which guide users through a series of questions to access a service or report a genuine planning violation. Co-created services can be made available as ‘templates’, minimising additional work for LPAs and encouraging re-use. > Jonathan McClue, Digital Planning Lead for the London Borough of Camden, said: > > “Using PlanX has helped Camden introduce a number of digital self-service routes and submission services for residents, including 'Find out if you need planning permission', 'Report a planning breach', and submitting planning applications and pre-applications online. > > “These tools have helped us structure information more clearly and reduce some of the administrative burden on officers. For example, the 'Find out if you need planning permission' service enabled us to retire our duty planner service while still providing residents with accessible guidance. > > “Our digital pre-application service has also streamlined payment and validation, helping us process enquiries more efficiently. We continue to explore additional flows that could further improve the experience for both residents and officers.” ## New funding to go further To build on this progress, the Digital Planning programme has made funding available for 23 LPAs to adopt PlanX for a year and experience the benefits for themselves. All are members of Open Digital Planning (ODP) and have demonstrated their commitment to modernise their services, including publishing their Conservation Area, Listed Building, Article 4 and Tree Preservation Order datasets in a standardised format and making them available on the Planning Data platform. The LPAs adopting PlanX are: * Adur District Council * Bristol City Council * Coventry City Council * East Riding of Yorkshire Council * Greater Cambridge Shared Planning (comprising Cambridge City and South Cambridgeshire District Councils) * Liverpool City Council * London Borough of Barking and Dagenham * London Borough of Brent * London Borough of Waltham Forest * Maidstone Borough Council * North Tyneside Council * Northumberland County Council * Plymouth City Council * Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea * South Gloucestershire Council * South Staffordshire Council * Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council * Stoke-on-Trent City Council * Swale Borough Council * Torbay Council * Waverley Borough Council * Westminster City Council * Worthing Borough Council ## Unlocking improvements in existing systems Alongside this, we invited expressions of interest from LPAs in ODP looking to make targeted improvements to their back-office with £20,000, speeding up the planning application process without having to replace systems entirely. At a recent ODP event, many told us about ‘quick wins’ which could deliver real results in 12 months. 28 LPAs were successful with some of the improvements they plan to make. Proposals put forward by LPAs include replacing old databases with Power BI dashboards, adopting mobile modules, digitalising pre-applications, integrating spatial data into development management and making Section 106 (developer contribution) data more transparent to citizens. The funded LPAs are: * Adur District Council * Cheltenham Borough Council * Cotswold District Council * East Riding of Yorkshire Council * Forest of Dean District Council * Gloucester City Council * Greater Cambridge Shared Planning (comprising of Cambridge City and South Cambridgeshire District Councils) * Leicester City Council * Liverpool City Council * London Borough of Barking and Dagenham * London Borough of Enfield * London Borough of Hackney * London Borough of Haringey * London Borough of Hillingdon * Medway Council * Northumberland County Council * Nottingham City Council * Rossendale Borough Council * Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council * South Gloucestershire Council * Southampton City Council * Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council * Stoke-on-Trent City Council * Torbay Council * Waverley Borough Council * West Oxfordshire District Council * Winchester City Council * Worthing Borough Council ## What happens next All the LPAs funded have one year to deliver, and will share their learnings along the way. Those adopting PlanX must have at least one service live to the public within 12 months and will provide monitoring data so we can measure the impact. > To hear more about their journey, look out for case studies on the Open Digital Planning website and LinkedIn. > For more information about the Digital Planning programme, follow us on LinkedIn to stay connected, and subscribe to our newsletter for the latest updates.

Local AI is a new team in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG), working with councils to support the responsible use of artificial intelligence (AI) across local government. We focus on the real pressures councils face and work in partnership with the sector to tackle shared problems. Our goal is to accelerate and enable the responsible use of AI across local government to drive efficiency, reduce costs and improve services. Our mission is to amplify the brilliant innovation already happening, reduce duplication, and create reusable tools in collaboration with councils. This work supports the Blueprint for Modern Digital Government, particularly the principle of building digital tools once and reusing them across the public sector. Minister Dixon, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at MHCLG who has responsibility for AI in Local Government said: > “Local government is where people see the real impact of good public services. This programme is about giving councils the confidence and practical tools to use AI in ways that genuinely help - cutting down admin, freeing up staff time, and ultimately improving outcomes for local people. > > We’re not imposing solutions from the centre. Instead, we’re learning from the excellent work already happening in councils and helping it scale up, so more places can benefit.” ## Why we're doing this Councils are under increasing pressure. Many frontline staff spend large amounts of time managing information across multiple systems, re-entering data, or writing up notes. In services like social care and housing, this can reduce the time available to support people directly. Some councils are already making progress with AI, while others are still building the data foundations, confidence and capacity they need to begin. The AI market can feel complex and fast moving, and it is not always clear which tools are safe, appropriate, and offer value for money. Local AI exists to help councils navigate this space with clarity and confidence, so AI adoption is easier, safer and more impactful. ## What we're focused on Local AI has two connected areas of focus: **1. Building and scaling solutions** * Building AI tools once and making them reusable * Amplifying and scaling locally developed tools **2. Strengthening foundations** * Improving data quality and availability * Supporting safe, secure and responsible AI use * Helping councils navigate the AI market ## What we've been doing Over the past year, we’ve focused on understanding where AI can add the most value in local government. This has included: * discovery work on pressures in temporary accommodation services and the potential to scale an AI transcription and summarisation tool developed by the Incubator for AI (i.AI) * close collaboration with partners across the sector, including Local Digital, GDS Local, i.AI and the Local Government Association * participation in the Local Government Innovation Hackathon on Homelessness and Rough Sleeping * establishing the Mayoral Data Council to improve data quality and availability. This work has shown that well targeted AI can reduce administrative burden, free up frontline time and support earlier, more consistent interventions. ## What we're doing now We are moving into delivery and expanding our work in areas where AI can make a practical difference. This includes: * incubating high impact use cases in temporary accommodation * developing a new transcription tool for public-facing workers based on i.AI’s Minute tool. * running further discovery work in other service areas * learning from local innovation and identifying ideas that can be reused * supporting councils to strengthen data quality, ethics and safety practices. This helps ensure we are solving the right problems and that councils help shape our roadmap from the start. ## Get involved Local AI only works if it works for councils – so we want to work with councils and others across the local government sector to help shape our work. You can: * work with us to influence our current and future phases of work * share with us about value and impact you are creating in your council with AI * register your interest as an early adopter * attend show and tells, roundtables and discussions. Get in touch by emailing LocalAI@communities.gov.uk.

Local Digital is pleased to share that the Scalable Approach to Vulnerability via Interoperability (SAVVI) and Open Referral UK (ORUK) data standards are taking an important step forward. The government is investing £1.1 million to test the adoption of these 2 leading data standards in real service environments. The findings will help shape future scaling across England. Pilots with Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA), and Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole (BCP) Council will help both areas identify and support vulnerable people earlier, more effectively and more consistently. These pilots mark a major step toward a future where councils can work proactively, not reactively, using data to identify early signs of people at risk to vulnerability and connect them to the right support before issues become more serious. ## Why scaling the standards matters Councils have been clear for some time that their ability to prevent crises depends on: 1. earlier sight of emerging needs 2. access to consistent, high-quality service information Local Digital has funded and co-developed the ORUK and SAVVI data standards with councils and sector partners over the last 7 years. ORUK helps frontline teams to connect people to the right services by providing structured service data that works together across organisations. SAVVI, developed by iStandUK, helps councils identify vulnerability sooner by highlighting early indicators of risk, such as: * homelessness * withdrawal from the workforce * pressures related to health or caring responsibilities As SAVVI and ORUK were designed to work together as part of the same data-sharing network, together, they create a foundation for public services helping councils to: * reduce pressure on crisis services * save money * improve outcomes for residents From April, both data standards will be managed by iStandUK. Bringing both interoperable standards together within iStandUK offers clear advantages: councils and suppliers will have a single point of expertise, aligned governance and consistent guidance. It also means both standards evolve in a coordinated and complementary way, reducing duplication and simplifying adoption for councils. ## What the pilots will tell us The pilots will look at the work councils need to do to adopt the ORUK and SAVVI standards, looking closely at the practical steps, time and resources involved in implementation. During the pilot period, we will build a clearer understanding of how shared data standards can help councils, partners and services work together seamlessly across organisational and geographic boundaries. The pilots will also help us identify the technical, governance and cultural barriers that councils face when embedding new data standards. This will allow us to develop the right guidance and tools to support wider adoption. In addition, the BCP Council pilot will combine structured ORUK data with artificial intelligence (AI) and digital solutions to provide more personalised support. It will show how emerging technologies can add value to local public services. These pilots will generate the learning needed to scale these approaches across England. They will inform delivery models, procurement pathways, timelines, staffing and value for money, so future adoption is achievable and sustainable. ## Why we’re piloting with the GMCA and BCP Council We are piloting in: * GMCA (investing £1 million across the 10 councils) to support the implementation and test the potential of SAVVI and ORUK at scale * BCP Council (investing £100,000) to explore how structured ORUK data can enable innovation through AI and digital social prescribing ### GMCA Greater Manchester has been named England’s first prevention demonstrator, leading the way from reacting to problems to preventing them. This includes tackling issues such as ill health and economic inactivity. Through this pilot, each Greater Manchester council will adopt ORUK data feeds and apply the SAVVI framework to real-world prevention challenges ranging from housing instability to pressures on social care and the NHS. Testing both standards across a large, multi-council region will help to explore one of the biggest advantages of shared standards – cross-boundary interoperability. The insights generated in Greater Manchester will help map barriers to adoption, create reusable implementation artefacts, and shape a roadmap for scaling SAVVI and ORUK across England. ### BCP Council As one of the leading adopters of the ORUK standard, BCP Council working with its partner, Community Action Network, will use ORUK’s structured service data to deliver a digital social prescribing tool. This will help frontline workers match residents with personalised support and has potential impact particularly in adult social care and homelessness services. The pilot will also produce technical guidance for other councils looking to integrate ORUK with AI and new technologies, demonstrating how open, structured data can lead to benefits beyond the original purpose. ## The opportunity ahead The wider opportunity for councils is significant. Adopting SAVVI could reduce crisis interventions, lower demand on acute services, and strengthen prevention work across local systems. By improving the consistency and quality of support available, they reduce duplication, enable cross-boundary referrals, and help deliver better outcomes for residents and more efficient services. ## What’s next We’ll share updates, insights and learning with the wider local government community as implementation develops. This will include practical tools that councils can adopt straight away. To keep informed and be invited to future events about the pilots and data standards, please subscribe to the Local Digital newsletter. ## Find out more For further updates, follow our channels: Visit the ORUK website. Connect with us on LinkedIn. Subscribe to our newsletter. Get involved to share a case study or take part in user research. Subscribe to the MHCLG Digital blog.

To celebrate International Women’s Day (IWD) 2026 on Sunday, 8 March, 4 colleagues in leadership roles spanning technology, artificial intelligence (AI) and data reflect on this year's theme: 'Give to gain'. They share how generosity with time, resources and knowledge, including everyday actions, have helped them advance their careers in digital, and how their own experiences equip them (and can enable others!) to contribute meaningfully to gender diversity and inclusion in their teams and the wider Digital and Data Profession. ### Hattie Kennedy, Chief Data Officer My professional journey is rooted in academia and community development. Before joining government, I ran a digital inclusion project for a housing association in Glasgow, where we built digital capacity and capability amongst residents, through mentoring programmes and initiatives like intergenerational skills swaps, pairing up young people with people in sheltered housing. Advocating for users on the ground, including empowering women and girls who lacked equal access to learning with digital skills, influenced my path into digital government and still shapes my approach to user needs. My 6-year journey at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) has been profoundly shaped by supportive line managers who have given me opportunities, challenged me, encouraged me to feel more confident, use my voice and feel comfortable at sharing my knowledge and experience. This support and mentoring have been one of the most valuable things I've received. In my current role, being part of a senior leadership team, headed by our Chief Digital and Information Officer Gill Stewart, that has got such gender parity, and to see the way in which this informs and shapes our discussions and our work, has been a positive experience. As a woman in a traditionally male-dominated field, you cannot help but be aware of people’s potential feelings and anxieties, like for example imposter syndrome. So, I try to keep an eye out for it, listen attentively and help people in my team in the same way that I've been helped. Our team is more diverse than some I've worked in in the past, but we can always do better and should do better to make our teams reflect the world around us. I recently mentored students at a secondary school, discussing career options, aspirations and the non-traditional career pathways available. Fundamentally, everything begins with instilling confidence in young people that careers are open to them irrespective of their gender or background. ### Kat Sexton, Deputy Director for Local AI I lead Local AI – the new team supporting councils to adopt AI, on a secondment from Birmingham City Council. I feel hugely privileged to be in MHCLG – not least because my digital leadership journey has been shaped by people who generously gave their time, support and believed in me. As the eldest of 3 daughters in a military family, we were told "girls can do anything" and encouraged to pursue STEM. At school, classmates often asked me for computer help, which built my confidence early on. After university, I worked in a small local government IT team, surrounded by supportive colleagues, who were content for me to challenge the status quo and try new things. I was even promoted when pregnant with my daughter! From there, every role and team I’ve been in have helped me grow. I'm fortunate to have never felt held back because of my gender, and because of that, I feel a responsibility to give back. I do this in very deliberate ways. I coach women in my teams, especially when they underestimate their abilities (as many of us do). I work hard to build inclusive, fun and productive environments, where psychological safety isn't a buzzword but a daily practice. I value empathy, openness and humility in leadership and try to be consistent and fair in my expectations around attitude, behaviour and ethic. One persistent barrier I still see is outdated thinking about leadership: the idea that leaders must ‘know everything’ and have all the answers. In reality, the pace of change, especially in digital and AI, demands curiosity, not certainty. My call to action this IWD is simple: Ditch the ego. Ask better questions, listen, create safe spaces for challenge, and value diverse perspectives. That’s where the real gains come from for women, for teams, and for public service as a whole. ### Kat Stevens, Lead Developer, Homes for Ukraine I lead software development for the Homes for Ukraine digital team which delivers and maintains the digital systems that support the Homes for Ukraine Sponsorship Scheme. Having spent over 2 decades in software engineering, an industry still heavily male-dominated, I've developed both a healthy dose of cynicism and awareness on how to foster a more diverse and inclusive workplace, including recognising the power of everyday actions. Joining government 9 years ago, first at the Government Digital Service (GDS), then MHCLG in 2025, made a difference: Collaborating with supportive colleagues, whose genuine expertise was matched by empathetic communication skills (an ideal combination) accelerated my learning, in addition to active communities and volunteer-run networks. At GDS, I ran the Women’s Network’s mentoring scheme, and I’m now a mentor on the cross-government mentoring scheme Catapult, which I find really rewarding. Our flexible working practices are brilliant but it's also the less tangible things that stand out, like the safety net in place around you if a challenge arises. In my experience, this structural support wasn’t always a given in the private tech sector. I was asked what changed when I moved from a junior to a leader role: the most noticeable change was validation. Tech women must often work much harder to gain equivalent recognition, feeling like you’re doing the job already when you get the promotion. What’s also changed is that I’m highly attuned to the unspoken challenges women face in my field, and this awareness informs how I lead my team. It's my responsibility to give feedback, look out for opportunities, support and mentor them. There are only so many hours in the day but it’s worth it in the long run. Investing in people, especially early in their careers, means we're more likely to retain them. Given the smaller pool of women developers, we need to hang on to them! ### Lou Welham, Head of Innovation, Digital Planning During my career, I’ve gained hugely from the support and advice of senior women. Mentorship has played a crucial role in my progression, especially as I navigated a career change from marketing into town planning consultancy, and then into government. Through various formal mentorship programmes, and with the support of generous mentors from Homes England and the development sector, I gained confidence during a period of uncertainty and reset for me professionally. Their guidance, time and encouragement gave me the reassurance I needed to take the next step and shapeshift into new industries. Although the programmes I took part in were predominantly focused on supporting women – and therefore largely run by female mentors – some of the most valuable advice I received came from a male mentor on a Women in Geospatial programme. He brought a genuinely fresh perspective and has become a true ally and champion in my career. Lou and her mentor in the Women in Geospatial programme Even though the formal mentorship has ended, we remain in touch, and we've even found opportunities to weave our day-to-day work together across government. That experience is a powerful reminder of the value we can add to others by offering new thinking and perspectives, even when we might be questioning whether our own experiences are directly relevant. Now in my current role in MHCLG, I steer a PropTech Innovation team, collaborating with local government, tech innovators and industry to pilot cutting-edge solutions which improve outcomes for communities. ### Find out more Read more colleagues' stories from previous years' International Women's Days. Find out more about how you can grow your career with us and check our latest job opportunities.

A screenshot of the homepage of the new Open Data Communities platform Open data plays a vital role in supporting transparency, accountability and innovation across the public sector. By making data openly available, we inform better decision-making, help develop new services, and support analysts, researchers, journalists and others to better understand their areas. That’s why 12 years ago, we established Open Data Communities (ODC) – the platform for the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) to routinely release its data outputs in fully open, accessible and reusable forms. But today, ODC is changing. This blog post talks about how it’s evolving and why. ## What exactly is Open Data Communities? ODC is comprised of 3 main features: 1. Indices of Multiple Deprivation tools 2. Energy Performance Certificates (EPC) open data and API 3. Linked Data Mart (powered by PublishMyData) Open Data Communities is now evolving to reflect how users today access and use open data, and to prepare the ground for future opportunities. ## What is changing? Here’s what’s changing in ODC and why. ### **New look  and a new URL** When work is complete, https://opendatacommunities.org/ will redirect users to https://open-data.communities.gov.uk/, a new purpose-built platform hosted on MHCLG-owned, robust and scalable cloud infrastructure. ### **New datasets in machine-readable format** We will begin by publishing one of our most popular datasets – the Indices of Multiple Deprivation – as CSV on the Web (CSVW). Publishing data in CSVW is part of our commitment to using open web standards, ensuring MHCLG data is consistent and linkable across government. The government guidance on open standards states that: > “By using CSVW, we can: > > * more easily process CSVs into an annotated data model > > * make CSVs easy to share and collaborate on > > * make CSVs machine-readable” > ### **New service: Get Energy Performance Data** EPC data – information that shows how energy efficient a building is – is another popular offering from the department. The EPC register team will now take ownership of EPC open data and build a new service. The service will have an improved user experience alongside reliable, quality data. This change reflects the value and importance of EPC data across both the public, private and third sectors. The team is working to build, test and deploy the new service, and in the interim, we will continue to signpost users to the existing tool from our new homepage. ### **Linked Data Mart to be deprecated** The Linked Data Mart (PublishMyData) is being retired. Linked Data Mart was a platform that focused on linked data and semantic querying, aimed primarily at users comfortable with specialist data tooling. After much research and evaluation, we identified that it was no longer providing the value for money and quality data required by our users. Interviews with users and analysis of usage statistics showed us that very few users used the specialist linked data tooling, preferring instead to download raw data to transform and analyse elsewhere such as with Power BI. ## Why are we making these changes now? Over the last 12 years, our users and their needs have changed significantly. Our user base now includes open data specialists, public sector analysts, private sector data consumers, academics, journalists and much more – all with different levels of technical expertise and methods for using data. Through our user research and an impact assessment, we found a clear preference for simple, accessible formats that can be used at scale without specialist tools. New tools, such as Power BI, allow users to transform and present data into compelling reports and dashboards. New initiatives, notably MHCLG’s Digital Planning Programme, are demonstrating how standardised data will underpin more efficient and effective services. Arguably, the rapid growth of AI will inevitably fuel demand and opportunities for data to be re-used in ways we cannot predict or imagine. Prioritising providing simpler formats lets us make a stronger case for value for money. We want to focus resources on formats that are accessible for the widest possible range of users and meet modern open data standards. By building a sustainable foundation, we create an opening for the future development of new features, where there’s a clear user need. We don’t see this as an end, but a deliberate new beginning. We are taking a user-led approach to open data within the department, with a hope that Open Data Communities can evolve in response to real demand. ## When are these changes happening? The Analytical Data as a Service team is hard at work ensuring a smooth transition, and we anticipate these changes being completed by the end of March 2026. Once the redirection and new datasets are live, we’ll share another blog post walking through the changes. ## Let us know what you think We’re excited about the future of the department’s open data offering. We would love to hear your feedback on these changes and any other features of Open Data Communities. Contact us at: odc@communities.gov.uk.

To build a house, you need a sound infrastructure. There’s no point in designing a kitchen that meets all your users’ culinary needs if the plumbing’s not right. Sustainable and reliable digital services are no different. That’s why, for the past year, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government's Funding Service has been building a new service based on an entirely new single codebase, rather than iterating on our microservices – a decision not taken lightly, as Gideon Goldberg (Lead Developer) explains in his blog post. Having a firm footing has removed some of the constraints we were facing in working towards solving a whole problem for users. This blog post tells the story of how we got here, what we’ve achieved so far and where we’re going next. ## Deliver grant funding and Access grant funding – two sides of the same coin The new service, known for a while in our team as ‘The Platform’, appears outwardly as 2 different services for different user groups, but they are inextricably linked. ### Deliver grant funding – for grant teams and form builders The service contains a way to build complex forms without developer intervention or configuration. Our content designers work with grant policy teams to co-design and build forms for monitoring reports. Grant teams can review and manage reports. ### Access grant funding – for grant recipients Grant recipients (for example, local authorities) can complete forms that have been created in Deliver grant funding. They can work though the form, using a task list and their responses are saved as they go. They submit the form so that grant teams can then access the completed reports in Deliver grant funding. Our new service: * **provides an end-to-end experience**  with self-serve capability, reducing reliance on manual support * **minimises bespoke design and build**  by championing standardisation across journeys, patterns and components * **provides  a joined-up, data-rich experience** for grant teams and grant recipients * **frees  up developers to focus on new features**, not maintenance, by improving platform stability, reusability and operational efficiency The service went live in December 2025 and at the time of writing, we've onboarded 2 grants: Pride in Place Impact Fund and the Common Ground Local Resilience Fund. ## How we got here Getting to this point has not always been easy, but our agile principles keep us flexible in our ways of working. Our multidisciplinary team has had the time and space to prototype in low, medium and high fidelities, testing concepts, and quickly changing things that are not working or not meeting our users’ needs. We’ve been writing design histories to record our decisions and share our progress in playbacks and show and tells. ### Starting with user needs and desk research A lot of the groundwork was already done. Our validated user needs around grant application and grant monitoring informed the build of the new service. And while developers learnt from the previous microservices architecture, our user-centred design team reviewed designs to take forward the ‘best bits’ which most closely aligned to our user needs and the Service Standard. We looked across other government departments to see if other form builder solutions could meet our users’ needs. For example, we looked very closely at GOV.UK Forms and found that, while some of the core functionality suited our needs, our forms require more complex features, such as being able to reference data from other parts of a form. With this scaffolding in place, we could start designing and developing the new service in earnest. ### Working in parallel A huge factor in the success and speed of this build was our parallel working – developers and designers working closely together. Instead of designing first and understanding technical feasibility later, we worked in parallel, sharing early ideas and pairing on prototypes. This meant that we could: * catch edge cases designers might have otherwise not accounted for * understand the technical dependencies and size up work accordingly * test high-fidelity prototypes with users sooner, and with more confidence * speed up our delivery timelines and allow for quick product decisions ### Co-designing with our users We prioritised designs on Deliver grant funding first, as that’s where forms are built, and then moved on to Access grant funding where forms are completed by grant recipients. The 2 main user groups for Deliver grant funding are grant teams and form builders (content designers in the Funding Service). Our content designers work directly with grant teams to understand their requirements, using their expertise in structure and language to ensure each form clearly meets users’ needs. As a direct user of the form building functionality, our content designers have been instrumental in providing feedback, and we’ve been able to iterate quickly. Early features designed and built on Deliver grant funding included: * adding details about a grant * creating a form using sections and questions * adding different question types to a form * previewing a form And on Access grant funding: * adding details about an organisation (grant recipient) * completing a form * submitting a form We tested early with all user groups so we could iterate as we went. A screenshot showing the 'Grant details' page of the Deliver grant funding service A screenshot of adding a question type in the Deliver grant funding service ## Continuing the build Since going live in December, we’ve been focusing on 4 main areas: ### **Data handling** * Support complex financial data and calculations in forms * Enable referencing previous answers and submissions ### **Form management** * Give form builders the ability to publish forms themselves * Support question copying and report duplication * Improve language and content following user research findings ### **Connectivity** * Allow form builders and policy teams to manage user access * Provide other government departments access to the service * Refine processes to make certifier verification more robust ### **Compliance and accessibility** * Test with users who use assistive technology (first round completed!) * Complete accessibility statement and publish statement We kept the names of the services intentionally broad to give ourselves room to grow. We’re currently assessing opportunities to integrate with other services or expand Deliver grant funding and Access grant funding, depending on user need. We’re currently working with other government departments who have similar user groups (and we’ve even hosted grants on our service, too), so get in touch by emailing fundingservice@communities.gov.uk if you'd like to find out more. You can also read about the future direction of the service.

We are pleased to share that the first release of our Local Government Reorganisation (LGR) Digital and Cyber Playbook is now live. The Playbook is an evolving collection of guidance, council experiences, and templates to support councils navigating the digital, data, technology and cyber aspects of local government reorganisation. The content responds directly to questions raised by practitioners in councils undergoing LGR. ## Who the Playbook is for The Playbook is designed for anyone leading and supporting reorganisation activity with a focus on digital, data and technology, including: * digital leaders in councils going through LGR, such as Chief Digital Officers, Heads of Digital and IT, or Chief Information Officers * digital and cyber practitioners working on specific digital projects within LGR programmes * senior officers outside digital seeking assurance that LGR planning aligns with best practice ## Shaped by the sector The Playbook has been developed collaboratively with colleagues across local government, central government, sector bodies and suppliers, who shared their time, experience and expertise. It draws on conversations with those who have been through reorganisation, offering insights they wish they’d had when they first started. ## A message from Ben Cheetham, Head of Local Digital > “We’re incredibly grateful to colleagues across the sector who contributed their insights. We hope the Playbook becomes a valuable guide for councils as they prepare for day one and lay strong foundations for the future.” ## What the Playbook includes The initial focus reflects 3 areas that councils identified as most urgent in user research: * **being  ready for day one **– the essential cyber, digital, data and technology requirements to ensure the new council is operational, safe and legally compliant * **managing  expectations **– how to maintain focus on priority projects while balancing the needs of the wider organisation * **collaboration  and baselining **– how councils can start talking and sharing ahead of LGR to ensure a smooth day one experience and laying foundations for future transformation ## What’s next Read our roadmap, which details upcoming content and the areas we'll cover next. Upcoming guidance will include: * cyber readiness * disaggregation of services and data * digital leadership during transition ## Get involved Join the Playbook community to shape future content – submit your own material, share your experience or give feedback on the current release. Follow our channels for our latest updates: * LinkedIn * Local Digital newsletter * MHCLG Digital blog  * Local Digital website

Case studies are widely used in government to share learning, explain what has been tried, and help teams understand what might work for them. But what makes a case study genuinely useful for the people who rely on them? Over the past few months, I have been working on a set of digital planning case studies. Alongside this, we recently published draft _ _Create or update a local plan guidance for the new plan making system. Both pieces of work are shaped by the same question: how do we design content that helps people take action, not just absorb information? The draft guidance takes a user-centred approach, reflecting how plan-makers work best and what they need at different stages of the process. We applied the same approach to our case studies, with user testing focusing on how local planning authorities use digital tools within plan-making, and aligning the structure and language so users can move easily between guidance and related examples. We want to encourage local planning authorities to adopt digital tools that can help deliver faster, more efficient plan-making. Their feedback shaped the case studies, and surfaced lessons that apply well beyond planning. This post shares those lessons. ## **What users really want from a case study** Across sessions, users were consistent in what they found helpful. ### 1. Put the most important information at the top Readers scan to orient themselves. They want to know quickly: * what problem was being solved * what changed * the scale of the work * the context If they cannot find these early, they often stop reading. ### 2. Be realistic and open about challenges Users valued honesty over polish. They wanted to know what took longer than expected, what barriers teams faced, what did not work and what they would do differently next time. This helps others plan more realistically and avoid repeating mistakes. ### 3. Include simple, meaningful and comparative data Numbers on their own are rarely useful. Users told us that data only helps them make sense of impact when it shows change, such as a before-and-after comparison. High-level metrics were enough, as long as they were framed against a previous consultation or workflow. This helped users understand what had improved and judge whether a similar approach might be relevant in their own context. ### 4. Use clear, human language Plain English matters most where users are navigating unfamiliar processes or tools. Keeping explanations short, avoiding acronyms and reducing technical phrasing helps readers focus on the learning rather than decoding the text. ### 5. Make space for peer learning Users want to learn from each other. Hearing directly from other local planning authorities helps build trust and makes the learning feel grounded in real experience. Case studies work best when they clearly reflect the voices and decisions of the teams involved. ### 6. Help people understand how something worked in practice Written descriptions can only go so far. Users found it easier to understand a process when they could see a simple image, screenshot or visual showing how something worked. These did not need to be polished, just clear enough to show the flow or the interface. ### 7. Make the content easy to find Users rarely browse for case studies. They tend to discover them when they are linked from relevant guidance, included in toolkits, shared across professional networks or surfaced at the point a decision needs to be made. Visibility is part of usefulness, which is why alignment with guidance such as Create or update a local plan _ _ matters. ## **How we applied these principles** User research helped us refine how we create case studies in our team. We added an overview box at the top of each case study with the outcome, scale, tools used and a clear statement of context. For example, in Hounslow and Chesterfield cut response processing time by 45%, readers can quickly see what changed, how the work was delivered and what type of planning task it supported before going into detail. We reordered sections so the essential details appear before narrative content. In Southampton helps residents explore the local plan online, the planning challenge, approach and outcomes are clearly set out early on, helping users understand whether the example is relevant to their own context before investing time in the full story. We added simple data wherever it existed, and clearly explained any limitations or challenges. Case studies such as Plymouth, South Hams and West Devon improve analysis with AI include high-level metrics alongside reflections on what took longer than expected and where engagement gaps remained, which users told us helped them plan more realistically. Where it supported understanding, we included simple visuals to show how something worked in practice. For example, Cotswold uses digital consultation hub to double engagement uses screenshots to illustrate the structure and flow of the tool, helping readers visualise the approach without needing a detailed technical explanation. Most importantly, the structure is now predictable and easy to move through, reflecting how users read. This pattern is consistent across the published digital planning case studies and is something we will continue to apply as the programme develops. We also designed the case studies to complement the Create or update a local plan guidance. We used shared language, familiar task framing and consistent terminology, so users can move easily between guidance and case studies without having to reorient themselves each time. Taken together, these changes support a wider aim of the programme: increasing confidence in using digital tools and contributing to a more modern, efficient planning service. When guidance and case studies work together, they help reduce uncertainty and make digital approaches feel more achievable. ## **What this means for teams writing case studies** The lessons we heard can apply across different areas: * start with what changed, not what happened * include limitations as deliberately as you include successes * add simple evidence, including comparative data when possible * use a structure that reflects how people read * keep the tone neutral and practical * use clear language that does not assume specialist knowledge * think about how users will discover the case study, not just how you publish it Good case studies are practical tools that help people make decisions and learn from others. When created with real users in mind, they become part of how teams build confidence and share knowledge. ## **What’s  next for us** We will  apply these principles to the next set of digital planning case studies, which will also be closely linked to the draft Create or update a local plan guidance. We are keen to hear ideas for future digital plan-making case studies and to continue working with local planning authorities to shape this work. If you have suggestions for case study collections, email digitalplanningteam@communities.gov.uk. We also rely on research volunteers to help test and improve our content. You can sign up to take part in user research. Keep up to date with the Digital Planning programme by  following the programme on LinkedIn and subscribing to the newsletter.

Local plan consultations can generate thousands of responses from members of the public, the development industry and statutory consultees. For local planning authority (LPA) teams, that means weeks of reading, categorising and summarising before the real work of analysis can begin. With the government committed to faster local plan preparation, we're exploring whether artificial intelligence (AI) can help reduce the time spent on some of the administrative tasks without compromising the quality of the consultation analysis while continuing to support greater citizen engagement. ## **Where this started** Through support from our PropTech Innovation Fund, we funded Greater Cambridge Shared Planning (GCSP) – the shared planning service for Cambridge City and South Cambridgeshire District Councils – to explore how AI could transform the consultation summarisation process. GCSP partnered with the University of Liverpool to develop a tool. Working with the planning team, the University built a bespoke large language model (LLM) trained on 15 years of Cambridge’s consultation data and key planning terminology. In a trial last year, the tool, called PlanAI, successfully summarised 3 planning consultations, on supplementary guidance documents, in 16 minutes – a task which took 18.5 hours to do manually. As well as the significant time difference, the quality of the summaries was also compared, with the AI-generated reports providing clear breakdowns of the themes, patterns and insights from the responses. The tool works by taking each consultation submission and recognising which comments or parts of comments relate to different policy areas – such as affordable housing or climate change – or chapters such as housing and environment. It then reviews all the representations together and can produce summaries by chapter, policy or site allocation, drawing out valuable insights. It can also provide a spatial representation of the comments, helping teams to identify under-represented areas that may need to be targeted for future engagement. By handling the time-consuming task of grouping and summarising consultation comments, the tool enables officers to spend more time reading and analysing feedback, and engaging directly with their communities and stakeholders. ## **Taking it further  by scaling the initial pilot** The results achieved in Greater Cambridge were really promising but we wanted to know if they could be replicated in other authorities, and achieve the same speed, accuracy and quality. To find out, the Digital Planning programme provided a further £45,000 to GCSP to stress-test the tool with 5 more local planning authorities – varying in size, location, consultation platform and stage of plan-making.  The 5 local planning authorities involved are: 1. Royal Borough of Greenwich 2. Hull City Council 3. Milton Keynes City Council 4. Liverpool City Region Combined Authority 5. Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council > Terry de Sousa, Planning Policy and Strategy Team Leader, Greater Cambridge Shared Planning, said: “We are delighted to share the work we have developed with the University of Liverpool with 5 other planning authorities. After 18 months of rigorous development, evaluation and testing, we now have a shared ambition to stress test the PlanAI in a range of contexts across the country, ensuring it is robust and fit for purpose at each stage of plan-making.” ## **Progress  so far** In the last few weeks, the 5 local authorities have begun testing the tool on a range of local plan consultations – some recently closed, others more historic. They've provided baseline data on how long previous consultations took to summarise manually, and planning officers are reviewing the AI-generated summaries to ensure they properly capture the consultation responses. This is an important step before relying on the tool more widely. > Marco Chan, Planning Policy Officer, Royal Borough of Greenwich, said: “Utilising AI technology in planning consultation is an exciting opportunity as it could boost efficiency and ensure an objective point of view in analysing main points in a multitude of feedback. For a local plan public consultation this could mean saving weeks in summarising representations and afford officers more time to refine policies and work on other documents.” > Professor Alex Lord, University of Liverpool, said: “Working with the pilot authorities has really illustrated the wide variety of approaches local authorities take when conducting and reporting on public consultations. The positive news is that the LLM-based approach we have developed has worked well across all the pilot authorities. As we progress the technology we’re now in a much better place to cover the full extent of varying local authority practices.” ## **Building in transparency and trust** A key part of the University of Liverpool's research has been exploring the ethical, environmental and transparency considerations that come with using AI in this way. During their early work, when they were developing the tool, they held focus groups with members of the public and planning stakeholders to understand people's questions and concerns early on. The findings have guided how GCSP communicates about the tool and builds confidence in its use. This has also led to the creation of an 'instant summarisation tool', which GCSP has been using at the front end of the process for their local plan consultation – summarising comments as people submit them, and giving respondents the option to amend the summary if they wish before it is submitted to the councils. ## **What  we hope to achieve** This pilot has been about stress-testing the technology to see if it can deliver the same efficiencies and accuracies in different settings. At the end of March, the authorities involved will produce a blueprint report to support other LPAs looking to adopt similar approaches. Our ambition is for local planning authorities to be able to explore the use of AI to support faster local plan preparation. **If you want to learn more about the pilot and hear about the progress so far from the teams involved,  join our online show and tell at 1pm on 26 February. Register to receive an invitation.  ** > For more information about the Digital Planning programme, follow us on LinkedIn to stay connected, and subscribe to our newsletter for the latest updates.

**National Apprenticeship Week is a chance to  showcase the impact of apprenticeships on both individuals and organisations. Apprenticeships aren't only for beginners or career changers – within the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG), we also provide them as an effective way for experienced specialists at all levels to grow professionally.** In this blog post, James, Senior Developer, shares insights and tips from his apprenticeship experiences at different stages of his career. ## **How I got into software development** Instead of going to university straight after school, I chose to embark on a software development apprenticeship, which led me to work in the private sector. Two years ago, I joined MHCLG and I’m now able to continue my professional development through an MSc Digital and Technology Apprenticeship (Level 7) funded by the department. My first apprenticeship as a junior developer gave me hands-on, real-world experience right away. I could put what I was learning into practice, making the whole process feel less theoretical than just being in a classroom. Having those 2 years of learning and working side-by-side, earning a digital qualification whilst building up work experience helped kick off my professional life. ## How I found my first apprenticeship I used the GOV.UK 'Find an apprenticeship' site, which connected me with several apprenticeship providers in the North East, local to me. Signing up with a provider means they often help with the search and help you find something aligned with your interests. First, I did a traineeship through the provider, allowing me to try out various technical roles. I really liked software development – it felt natural and I enjoyed the learning process, so I applied. ## What it takes to be an apprentice (and the vital soft skills you gain) Apprenticeships require dedication and a self-starter approach. You'll need to stick with it, set aside proper time for learning, and keep your work and personal life balanced, but it's totally worth it. Importantly, an apprenticeship is also great at building those essential soft skills. Juggling work, life, and the time needed for studying and assignments improves your time management, agility and organisation skills, which are highly valued in the workplace. ## Progressing my career on a master's degree apprenticeship with MHCLG After completing a bachelor's degree through the Open University I wanted to continue growing and learning new things. However, pursuing a master's degree (MSc) independently felt time-consuming and expensive, and potentially not directly relevant to my role. I was able to take advantage of MHCLG’s extensive apprenticeship offering and successfully applied for an MSc Digital and Technology Apprenticeship (Level 7), funded by the department and delivered by a North East-based provider. “When you work in MHCLG you get access to a range of development opportunities for colleagues at all levels, including apprenticeships that can lead to formal accreditations and even bachelor's or master's degrees. This is part of our efforts to actively support our people's progression and build the crucial digital and data skills we need for the future of public services.”  –**Anisha Ahuja, Digital Operations Officer  ** ## Applying fresh learning directly to my work in MHCLG The learning is integrated and highly relevant to my specific work in MHCLG, rather than being an abstract degree. Assignments relate directly to my department operations, and I also get to choose some of the modules that I do, so that I can tailor the learning to my and my organisation’s needs. But remember to be proactive: don’t hesitate to ask questions and maximise the benefit of peer-to-peer learning. For example, asking 'Would you mind if we discuss this later?' about relevant projects is a great way to connect them to your apprenticeship work. Apprentices at all levels can also bring fresh perspectives, which invigorate established teams. It’s a win-win. ## Managing the demands of my apprenticeship Training time is pretty flexible, but again I need to balance it with work and personal life – a bit of flexibility is key. I'm allocated 6 hours for on-the-job training per week, which may sometimes fluctuate if work gets busy. It's important to remember you have a regular, full-time job on top of your apprenticeship. ## Looking ahead By the end of this journey, I’ll have achieved a lot for my professional development both in terms of technical expertise and new leadership skills. A Level 7 MSc qualification will provide a solid academic foundation and boost my confidence. And taking the knowledge and skills back to apply directly in my role will benefit me professionally, the department and the people I work with! Learn more about the work we do in MHCLG and how you can progress your digital career with us. Find out more about how you can start and grow a career in Government Digital and Data, including through TechTrack, the government's bespoke digital upskilling apprenticeship programme. National Apprenticeship Week 2026 starts today, and continues until 15 February. #NAW2026

<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img fetchpriority="high" decoding="async" width="620" height="372" src="https://mhclgdigital.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/222/2026/02/MHCLG-Funding-platform-620x372.jpeg" alt="A screenshot showing the 'Access grant funding' page " class="wp-image-4934" srcset="https://mhclgdigital.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/222/2026/02/MHCLG-Funding-platform-620x372.jpeg 620w, https://mhclgdigital.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/222/2026/02/MHCLG-Funding-platform-310x186.jpeg 310w, https://mhclgdigital.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/222/2026/02/MHCLG-Funding-platform-768x461.jpeg 768w, https://mhclgdigital.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/222/2026/02/MHCLG-Funding-platform-1536x922.jpeg 1536w, https://mhclgdigital.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/222/2026/02/MHCLG-Funding-platform.jpeg 1743w" sizes="(max-width: 620px) 100vw, 620px" /></figure> <p>Over the past year, <a href="https://mhclgdigital.blog.gov.uk/category/funding-service/">the Funding Service</a> has been building a new funding platform for the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) based on an entirely new single codebase. ‘Deliver grant funding’ and ‘Access grant funding’ deliver enhanced capabilities whilst being simpler to maintain and iterate on.</p> <p>This blog post explains why we decided to do this and how we approached it from a technical standpoint, as part of our mission to <a href="https://mhclgdigital.blog.gov.uk/2024/12/10/funding-service-how-digital-innovation-will-help-us-to-deliver-grants-faster-better-and-cheaper/">deliver grants faster, better and cheaper</a>.</p> <h2 class="wp-block-heading">Why we built a new platform</h2> <p>We thought long and hard about writing a new platform versus making incremental improvements to our previous microservices. This is not a decision to take lightly as it involves a major upfront commitment and is often regarded a last resort once other re-engineering options have been considered.</p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Learning from our previous architecture</h3> <p>Previously we used a microservices architecture, slicing by both frontend and backend functionality, as well as by different stages of the funding lifecycle. To paint the picture, our microservices included:</p> <ul class="wp-block-list"> <li>Authenticator</li> <li>Account Store</li> <li>Fund Store</li> <li>Form Designer</li> <li>Form Runner</li> <li>Apply</li> <li>Assess</li> <li>Post-Award</li> </ul> <p>Whilst this delivered some initial benefits, for example being able to speed up time to go-live by using existing capabilities and components from the <a href="https://github.com/XGovFormBuilder/digital-form-builder" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">XGov Form Builder</a> as part of the system, there were many downsides caused by early design decisions:</p> <ul class="wp-block-list"> <li>Whilst each transaction was important (with grants distributing millions of pounds in total), actual user numbers in web-scale terms were very low. This meant we were running a large amount of (costly to run and maintain) infrastructure relative to the number of actual users.</li> <li>A lack of API versioning, combined with tight service coupling, meant co-ordinating the rollout of new features often required a complex orchestration of releases and might cause unexpected regressions or downtime.&nbsp;</li> <li>We had numerous end-to-end tests which were slow and flaky creating error fatigue, false positives and making the wall time from code push to release sometimes take hours.</li> <li>The use of traditional Server-Side rendering combined with many backend services meant one webpage often called multiple microservices synchronously, meaning any failure in a single microservice could cause entire sections of the site to fail to render. There was a distinct lack of <a href="https://akfpartners.com/growth-blog/fault-isolation-swim-lane" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">fault isolation and swim lanes</a>.</li> <li>Feature development was slower as developers had to maintain the mental model of all these services in their head and build all the REST HTTP interfaces between them to change any major end user functionality. Furthermore, the XGov Form Builder being written in TypeScript while the rest of the system was Python, meant developers had to be fluent in both of these languages, or hand work off. This combined complexity meant the time to onboard a new developer, and for them to be confident in making changes, was months.</li> <li>Configuration for each grant was hardcoded in multiple microservices. Whilst initially a pragmatic decision to get a first grant minimum viable product (MVP) live, this was never fully revisited, meaning that developer time and multiple app deployments were needed to add each grant and grant round, involving a hugely complex runbook to perform. This process also meant grants were configured 'just in time' so only available for policy teams to preview just before go-live, meaning any issues spotted in user acceptance testing (UAT) could cause a delay in the grant go-live date.</li> </ul> <p>We realised what we had built was closer to a <a href="https://heidloff.net/article/do-not-build-distributed-monoliths/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Distributed Monolith</a>. We had all the pain of maintaining microservices without many of the benefits.</p> <p>These issues impacted all our user groups in different ways, grant applicants and recipients were more likely to experience errors and outages, it was difficult for developers to work at pace (without impacting quality) and feature development was slow for our product and service owners.</p> <p>Another factor in play was a pivot in policy through <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/funding-simplification-doctrine-guidance-and-further-information/funding-simplification-doctrine-guidance-and-further-information" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">government’s commitment to simplify funding</a>, moving away from competitive grants towards allocative grants, which required different capabilities. This meant some of what the previous microservices did would be less useful and new capabilities were needed, making it an opportune moment for change.</p> <h2 class="wp-block-heading">Testing our hypothesis with a prototype</h2> <p>To prove and de-risk the single platform approach, a small team of a couple of developers spent a fortnight building a prototype. This was much higher fidelity than you might ordinarily build using the <a href="https://prototype-kit.service.gov.uk/docs/github-store-new-prototype" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">GOV.UK Prototype Kit</a>. But taking this approach enabled us to prove and demonstrate high-level hypotheses the team had, including:</p> <ul class="wp-block-list"> <li>development would be faster and simpler using a two-tier architecture (app and database) in a single codebase</li> <li>we could re-create most of the capabilities offered by the XGov Form Builder in Python</li> <li>we could provide a 'self-service' offering where non-technical users could configure a grant within the service</li> </ul> <p>Following a really intense effort by the team, by the end of the fortnight we had a prototype with a real data model, database backend and full WYSIWYG (What You See is What You Get) preview capabilities. This felt like a huge step up from the status quo and the demo was enough to convince stakeholders including our product manager and service owner of the value of the project.</p> <h2 class="wp-block-heading">How we approached the build</h2> <p>The team were well aware of the possible pitfalls designing and scaling a Monolith. To try and avoid those, we put some guardrails in place which would provide clear boundaries within the system, such as:</p> <ul class="wp-block-list"> <li>all grant configuration is performed in the web interface and stored in the database (no Git commits or developer scripts are required to onboard a grant)</li> <li>all communication with the database is through a Data Access Layer in a separate Python Module. We <a href="https://github.com/communitiesuk/funding-service/blob/64dbb0d00038b388813963c876cb8244f70c5501/pyproject.toml" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">enforce this contract with a linter</a> which runs every time the code is updated</li> <li>all functionality is in a single codebase and deployable application</li> <li>all functions have Python type hints which are enforced by a type checker</li> </ul> <p>Although we were changing architectural pattern, we retained many of the tried and tested building blocks the team were already familiar with, including:</p> <ul class="wp-block-list"> <li>Python</li> <li>Flask</li> <li>SQLAlchemy</li> <li>AWS Aurora Postgres</li> <li>Cloud Native Buildpacks</li> <li>GitHub Actions</li> </ul> <p>This brought a level of familiarity and helped team members quickly become productive on the new codebase.</p> <p>Now to deliver it!</p> <h2 class="wp-block-heading">What we achieved</h2> <figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img decoding="async" width="601" height="439" src="https://mhclgdigital.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/222/2026/02/Deliver-grant-funding-preview.png" alt="A preview of the Deliver grant funding service, contact information page" class="wp-image-4942" srcset="https://mhclgdigital.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/222/2026/02/Deliver-grant-funding-preview.png 601w, https://mhclgdigital.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/222/2026/02/Deliver-grant-funding-preview-310x226.png 310w" sizes="(max-width: 601px) 100vw, 601px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">A screenshot showing the new platform interface which includes full preview capabilities</figcaption></figure> <p>We have recently gone live with our new 'Deliver grant funding' and 'Access grant funding' services, and 2 grants have already been onboarded to the new system.</p> <p>Although 'Deliver' and 'Access' appear as separate services, they are essentially 2 sides of the same coin, a form building/CMS side and an applicant/recipient-facing side. Working in a single codebase and database made it much easier to deliver features like WYSIWYG preview, as they are essentially just different views on the same data.</p> <p>Furthermore, having these self-service capabilities means that content designers can design, share live previews with policy teams and launch a whole grant without any developer involvement. This will be hugely beneficial in freeing up developers to work on new functionality, rather than doing grant configuration as code.</p> <figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" width="620" height="651" src="https://mhclgdigital.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/222/2026/02/Access-grant-funding-review-reporting-page-620x651.png" alt="A screenshot showing a review reporting page in Access grant funding " class="wp-image-4944" srcset="https://mhclgdigital.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/222/2026/02/Access-grant-funding-review-reporting-page-620x651.png 620w, https://mhclgdigital.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/222/2026/02/Access-grant-funding-review-reporting-page-310x326.png 310w, https://mhclgdigital.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/222/2026/02/Access-grant-funding-review-reporting-page-768x807.png 768w, https://mhclgdigital.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/222/2026/02/Access-grant-funding-review-reporting-page-1463x1536.png 1463w, https://mhclgdigital.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/222/2026/02/Access-grant-funding-review-reporting-page-1950x2048.png 1950w, https://mhclgdigital.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/222/2026/02/Access-grant-funding-review-reporting-page.png 2032w" sizes="(max-width: 620px) 100vw, 620px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">A screenshot showing a review reporting page in Access grant funding (fictional example)</figcaption></figure> <p>As I move on to an equally exciting digital programme within MHCLG (<a href="https://mhclgdigital.blog.gov.uk/category/elections/">Elections Digital</a>), I'm proud to have left our civil servant-led team <a href="https://github.com/communitiesuk/funding-service" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">working in the open</a> with (after a few iterations) a simple, right-sized architecture which enables them to build out features at pace, empower colleagues with self-service capabilities, and a platform to continue to extend across the funding lifecycle.</p> <blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow"> <p>To learn more about the future direction of the service, <a href="https://mhclgdigital.blog.gov.uk/2025/12/16/the-future-of-the-funding-service-solving-a-whole-problem-for-users/">check out this blog post</a> or email <a href="mailto:FundingService@communities.gov.uk">FundingService@communities.gov.uk</a>.</p> </blockquote>

<p>In November we&nbsp;<a href="https://mhclgdigital.blog.gov.uk/2025/11/18/testing-new-planning-data-specifications-with-industry-5-pilot-partnerships-paving-the-way/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">shared details of 5 pilots testing new data standards for planning applications</a>. These pilots bring together local planning authorities&nbsp;(LPAs),&nbsp;software&nbsp;suppliers&nbsp;and the Planning Portal,&nbsp;to see how proposed&nbsp;standards work in practice.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p> <figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img fetchpriority="high" decoding="async" width="620" height="360" src="https://mhclgdigital.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/222/2025/11/Data-on-screen-MHCLG-Digital-Planning-620x360.png" alt="Drawing of a laptop showing various graphics and anonymous data on screen" class="wp-image-4659" srcset="https://mhclgdigital.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/222/2025/11/Data-on-screen-MHCLG-Digital-Planning-620x360.png 620w, https://mhclgdigital.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/222/2025/11/Data-on-screen-MHCLG-Digital-Planning-310x180.png 310w, https://mhclgdigital.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/222/2025/11/Data-on-screen-MHCLG-Digital-Planning-768x445.png 768w, https://mhclgdigital.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/222/2025/11/Data-on-screen-MHCLG-Digital-Planning.png 1062w" sizes="(max-width: 620px) 100vw, 620px" /></figure> <h2 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Why this&nbsp;work&nbsp;matters</strong>&nbsp;</h2> <p>When someone applies for planning permission, information flows between multiple systems – from the applicant, through&nbsp;an application submission service such as&nbsp;the Planning Portal, into the local planning authority’s planning software, to be&nbsp;determined.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p> <p>Currently&nbsp;information is stored in&nbsp;different ways&nbsp;by different systems.&nbsp;<a href="https://mhclgdigital.blog.gov.uk/2025/07/08/standardising-the-planning-application-process-progress-and-next-steps/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">We are creating a data standard which can structure planning application information in a&nbsp;consistent way</a>&nbsp;so that&nbsp;each&nbsp;system can exchange and share data in the same way, making the planning system more consistent and efficient.&nbsp;</p> <h2 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Testing the data standards</strong>&nbsp;</h2> <p>We&nbsp;have now&nbsp;completed&nbsp;phase&nbsp;1&nbsp;of&nbsp;our&nbsp;work&nbsp;to test the data standards in practice.&nbsp;This&nbsp;phase&nbsp;focused on understanding how well the draft specifications align with real planning systems, real data, and real local authority workflows.&nbsp;The purpose of&nbsp;phase&nbsp;1&nbsp;was simple. We needed evidence&nbsp;of the impact of the proposed&nbsp;specifications on current technology and processes. We needed to know what&nbsp;fits&nbsp;against their systems, what partly fits, and what does not yet fit.&nbsp;We needed to understand the operational implications.&nbsp;And we needed a shared picture across LPAs, suppliers, and&nbsp;MHCLG&nbsp;before&nbsp;attempting&nbsp;any implementation activity.&nbsp;</p> <p>During&nbsp;November and December&nbsp;2025,&nbsp;our 5 pilot partnerships examined the draft data specifications field by field.&nbsp;They looked at what the standards propose compared to what their systems currently do.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p> <ul class="wp-block-list"> <li>Suppliers completed early mapping and began exploring the practical impacts of adopting the specifications.&nbsp;&nbsp;</li> </ul> <ul class="wp-block-list"> <li>LPAs&nbsp;analysed&nbsp;the&nbsp;specifications&nbsp;against their systems and planning processes.&nbsp;&nbsp;</li> </ul> <ul class="wp-block-list"> <li>The Planning Portal provided complementary mapping and validation insights.&nbsp;&nbsp;</li> </ul> <p>Common themes&nbsp;emerged&nbsp;quickly, including&nbsp;how&nbsp;timestamps&nbsp;should be&nbsp;handled,&nbsp;how&nbsp;addresses should be&nbsp;structured&nbsp;and&nbsp;differences between&nbsp;regional&nbsp;requirements and&nbsp;national&nbsp;standards.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</p> <p>These&nbsp;issues&nbsp;need&nbsp;to be&nbsp;resolved&nbsp;before the standards can be implemented widely.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p> <p>The outcome of this work is a clearer, more grounded understanding of the specification. We now have evidence rather than assumptions. <a href="https://github.com/digital-land/planning-application-data-specification/issues" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">They are all captured on an issues log. </a>We can identify where change is straightforward, where it requires system rework, and where policy or validation rules need refinement. Most importantly, all partners are in agreement the specifications are workable, and the work has allowed us to understand what needs to happen next. </p> <p>Mary Lester,&nbsp;Service Designer in the Transformation, Customer and Cultural Services team, at Dorset Council said:</p> <blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow"> <p> “Phase 1 really helped us, and our supplier, DEF, get to grips with the standards in detail, so we could look at the&nbsp;true&nbsp;scale and type of issues that would come from switching to the new standard.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p> <p>“We now have a much clearer view of what can be solved within the systems&nbsp;relatively simply, and which problems need wider discussion – and we are using what we learnt in the first&nbsp;phase&nbsp;to target the trickier issues and themes in&nbsp;phase&nbsp;2.”&nbsp;</p> </blockquote> <p>Phase&nbsp;1&nbsp;has&nbsp;also generated&nbsp;some&nbsp;useful questions. What does compliance actually mean&nbsp;in practice? How should national and regional variants coexist?&nbsp;How do we manage historic data? These questions&nbsp;are being&nbsp;explored now in&nbsp;phase 2.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p> <h2 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>What happens next</strong>&nbsp;</h2> <p>Phase 2, which&nbsp;is running now until the end of&nbsp;February&nbsp;2026,&nbsp;is focusing&nbsp;on impact assessment, estimating the efforts, exploring feasibility and and&nbsp;developing&nbsp;realistic implementation options.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p> <ul class="wp-block-list"> <li>Suppliers&nbsp;are&nbsp;refining&nbsp;their&nbsp;analysis&nbsp;and&nbsp;estimating&nbsp;the development work needed to&nbsp;support the standards&nbsp;</li> </ul> <ul class="wp-block-list"> <li>LPAs&nbsp;are&nbsp;continuing to&nbsp;engage&nbsp;their&nbsp;planning&nbsp;and&nbsp;internal teams&nbsp;to understand the implications&nbsp;</li> </ul> <ul class="wp-block-list"> <li>The Data Design team&nbsp;in MHCLG’s Digital Planning programme,&nbsp;will&nbsp;update the&nbsp;specifications&nbsp;based on&nbsp;feedback&nbsp;and co-ordinate across all the partners.&nbsp;</li> </ul> <h2 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Get involved</strong>&nbsp;</h2> <p>This work is being shaped by collaboration between LPAs,&nbsp;suppliers&nbsp;and planning professionals.&nbsp;&nbsp;The quality of analysis&nbsp;and&nbsp;openness&nbsp;across the partnership&nbsp;has&nbsp;put us in a strong position to progress.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p> <p>MHCLG’s role in this phase has been to&nbsp;convene, coordinate and create the conditions for meaningful analysis across a complex landscape. This work sits at the intersection of local authority practice, commercial software constraints, national&nbsp;platforms&nbsp;and policy intent.&nbsp;We have&nbsp;focused on bringing these groups together,&nbsp;maintaining&nbsp;a shared understanding of the purpose of the pilot specifications, and ensuring that feedback from each perspective is surfaced,&nbsp;understood&nbsp;and reconciled.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p> <p>Join the data standards community if you want to help shape the planning applications data specifications.&nbsp;<a href="https://design.planning.data.gov.uk/project/planning-applications" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">You can sign up and find information, updates and relevant links about this work on the planning applications submissions project homepage.</a>&nbsp;</p> <blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow"> <p>Keep up to date with the Digital Planning programme by&nbsp;<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/digital-planning-uk-gov/?lipi=urn%3Ali%3Apage%3Ad_flagship3_search_srp_all%3BrI2U%2FBHrQMKKeSEFaN7Wxw%3D%3D" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"> following the programme on LinkedIn</a> and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/7120692380873175040/?displayConfirmation=true" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribing to the newsletter</a>. &nbsp;</p> </blockquote>

Image credit: istock.com/VV Shots When most people think about Fire and Rescue Services (FRS), they picture appliances rushing to emergencies, firefighters tackling blazes, or lifesaving rescues. What’s less visible – but just as vital – is the technology working behind the scenes to record, share and coordinate the information that helps keep communities safe. We are the Fire and Rescue Data Platform (FaRDaP) team, and this is how we built and now run one of the most critical digital services underpinning emergency response across England, Scotland and Wales. ## Who we are The FaRDaP team is a live operational team, responsible for running a national service that supports 48 Fire and Rescue Services across Great Britain. Our work sits at the core of emergency operations: every time a 999 call is made and a fire service attends an incident, our platform plays a role in ensuring the incident is recorded accurately, consistently and securely. We aren’t just maintaining a website or managing a database – we're operating a nationwide, real-time digital backbone that thousands of emergency personnel rely on every single day. ## What the FaRDaP does The FaRDaP is a data collection platform that allows frontline responders to record incident data. Our primary users are firefighters, as well as serving analysts with the data they need for publications. Here’s how it works in practice: 1. A member of the public dials 999 to report an emergency, or that an automatic alarm system has gone off. 2. The control centre operative logs a summary of the incident in their front-end command system. 3. This incident record is created, and the information captured on the call is transferred into the FaRDaP via application programming interfaces (APIs), ensuring it’s stored securely and consistently. 4. After the incident, the relevant Fire and Rescue Service Officer logs in to the FaRDaP to update the record with outcomes and detailed insights. Some Fire and Rescue Services have their own local systems and submit the full incident details to the FaRDaP. These incident records form a national dataset used for operational intelligence, policy-making and public safety improvements. ## The transition from the legacy system to the FaRDaP One of our biggest achievements was the 8-week transition that brought 48 Fire and Rescue Services onto the FaRDaP from a legacy system. Despite the scale and complexity, along with the impact of the transfer of responsibility for fire and rescue-related policy and operational functions from the Home Office to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG), the move was smooth and well-coordinated, thanks to careful planning, phased onboarding, and close collaboration with each service. Feedback from the sector was highly positive. Users praised the platform's reliability and ease of use, as well as the responsive support they received throughout the process. By the end of the 8 weeks, every service was live on the FaRDaP – on schedule and with confidence – setting a strong foundation for the platform’s future. ## Why we built it The FaRDaP officially went live on 15 September 2025, but its story started long before that. For 16 years, Fire and Rescue Services had relied on the previous platform, the Incident Recording System (IRS). While IRS had served the sector well, over time it had become technically outdated, difficult to maintain, and a growing cyber security risk. Importantly, the new platform will be the foundation for collecting further Fire and Rescue Datasets regarding other prevention and protection activities as well as incidents attended. The aim is to deliver a full, standardised data picture of Fire and Rescue activities at a national level. The fire sector needed a modern, secure, scalable platform built for today’s threats, operational needs, and expectations about performance and reliability. So, the FaRDaP was built as a safer, smarter, more resilient foundation for the future of fire incident data and future collections. ## What we have achieved The main outcomes from the project and benefits offered by the new service are: ### **Service  and sector outcomes** * **smooth transition from legacy systems**  completed in just 8 weeks, with no disruption to emergency response * **positive user confidence and adoption** , driven by reliability, ease of use and responsive support * **stronger collaboration across the sector** , enabled by shared standards and coordinated onboarding ### **Data  and insight outcomes** * **high-quality national incident dataset**  that underpins: - operational intelligence - official statistics and publications - evidence-based policy and decision-making * **the foundation for expanded datasets** , covering prevention, protection and wider Fire and Rescue activity ### **Technology  and security benefits** * **a modern, secure and resilient platform** , replacing a system that had become a cyber security risk * **high service availability**  for a platform relied on daily by thousands of emergency personnel * **scalable architecture**  designed to evolve with future operational and data needs * **API-driven integration**  that enables secure data transfer from control systems and local Fire and Rescue Service platforms ## Looking ahead Since launch, the FaRDaP has already become an essential platform for frontline services, but our journey is far from over as we continue to iterate the platform. We continue to: * improve usability based on user feedback * enhance functionality to better serve our users * expand capabilities to support evolving needs * expand the datasets collected The journey to the FaRDaP has been one of collaboration and purpose. We're proud to operate a service that helps emergency teams record incident data more easily, keeps communities safer and supports the fire sector in building a stronger digital future. Find out more about the objectives and principles that guide our work in digital.

Imagine being able to instantly check whether a property sits in a conservation area or whether a tree is protected, without wading through PDFs or making a phone call to your local authority. This February, 49 more local planning authorities (LPAs) are joining the Digital Planning Improvement Fund to make this a reality. Each LPA is receiving £50,000 to help them publish their essential planning data in standardised, open formats on the national Planning Data platform. This important step will transform how residents, businesses and other stakeholders access vital planning information, moving from fragmented, hard-to-find data to data that is standardised, searchable and up to date. This shift enables better decision-making, greater transparency and efficiency, and will support real innovation in housing and development. > Reading Borough Council, one of the authorities joining, said: “By improving data quality and creating transparent workflows, we’ll give residents and businesses better access to accurate planning information, making it simpler to understand what’s happening in their area. These improvements will support well-informed decisions that help shape sustainable, vibrant communities for the future.” ## **Four priority datasets** Each LPA is committing to publishing 4 planning datasets – Conservation areas, listed buildings, Tree Preservation Orders and Article 4 Directions. Once published, this data powers tools like PlanX, software that can guide applicants to find out if they need planning permission or report a planning breach. ## **Accelerating progress through shared  expertise** The fund doesn’t just provide financial support. LPAs also join Open Digital Planning, a transformation network of local planning authorities tackling the same data and digital challenges, with access to training and specialist support from MHCLG’s Digital Planning community and data teams. Members of Open Digital Planning at an event in 2025. > Dartmoor National Park Authority, said: “Being awarded funding from the Digital Planning Improvement Fund means Dartmoor National Park can progress our data improvements at a much faster pace, provides the resource to access specialist advice and will help us realise our ambition of becoming a data driven accessible planning service.” ODP helps authorities avoid reinventing the wheel. Members learn from each other including other LPAs further along in their data publishing and digital planning journey, adopting proven approaches rather than duplicating effort. > Nuneaton and Bedworth Borough Council, said: "Gaining this funding and being part of the ODP community will be a fantastic opportunity for us to learn from other council’s that are already part of the community, gain best practice insights, collaborate on improving digitally and move forward into a new era of digitally enabling and enhancing planning practices and system techniques.” ## **A growing movement** The Digital Planning Improvement Fund now supports 171 LPAs, more than a third of councils across England, to publish their planning data – including 70 who joined last year, 46 who joined in March 2025 and 24 who started in September 2025. New LPAs begin with the Digital Planning Maturity Assessment, a self-assessment process that helps planning teams understand their digital strengths and identify areas to improve. This creates a clear starting point and helps shape realistic, achievable action plans. The 49 LPAs starting their digital journey next month are: 1. Bedford Borough Council 2. Blaby District Council 3. Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council 4. Broads Authority 5. Burnley Borough Council 6. Cherwell District Council 7. Cheshire East Council 8. Chorley Borough Council 9. City of Bradford Metropolitan Council 10. Cornwall Council 11. Dartmoor National Park Authority 12. Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council 13. East Suffolk Council 14. Fareham Borough Council 15. Gravesham Borough Council 16. Kirklees Council 17. Lancaster City Council 18. Lichfield District Council 19. London Borough of Ealing 20. London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham 21. London Borough of Merton 22. London Borough of Richmond upon Thames 23. London Borough of Sutton 24. Luton Borough Council 25. Middlesbrough Council 26. Newcastle under Lyme Borough Council 27. North West Leicestershire District Council 28. North York Moors National Park Authority 29. Norwich City Council 30. Nuneaton and Bedworth Borough Council 31. Peak District National Park Authority 32. Portsmouth City Council 33. Preston City Council 34. Reading Borough Council 35. Ribble Valley Council 36. Royal Borough of Greenwich 37. Rushcliffe Borough Council 38. Sevenoaks District Council 39. Slough Borough Council 40. South Ribble Borough Council 41. Stroud District Council 42. Sunderland City Council 43. Telford and Wrekin Council 44. Tonbridge and Malling Borough Council 45. Tunbridge Wells Borough Council 46. West Lancashire Borough Council 47. Woking Borough Council 48. Wokingham Borough Council 49. Wyre Forest District Council ## **Get involved** Follow their journey through case studies on the Open Digital Planning website. LPAs can check and provide their data using the Planning Data platform. For more information visit the Open Digital Planning website or follow on LinkedIn. > For more information about the Digital Planning programme follow us on LinkedIn to stay connected, and subscribe to our newsletter for the latest updates.

Every year, local planning authorities make hundreds of thousands of planning decisions. But right now, that decision data exists in dozens of different formats across different systems, making it difficult to use, compare and learn from. We're working to change that by creating a planning decision data specification – a common standard that will make planning decision data consistent, accessible and useful across England. In a recent blog post, we shared what we learnt from our initial user research sessions about the problems people face and why standardised decision data is so critical to solving them. ## **Why  this matters** Consistent data created at the decision stage will benefit everyone working in the planning system and beyond: * It will help local planning authorities publish consistent decision information on the public register and spend less time on manual data returns, and more time making planning decisions. Meeting statutory publication requirements will become simpler and more automated. * It will also give authorities and developers a clear line of sight over conditions, from the point they are imposed through to discharge and compliance, making follow-on actions more transparent and easier to manage. * It will enable more data to be viewed nationally so that people can see patterns, identify bottlenecks, and make evidence-based improvements to policy and practice. * Open, standardised data creates opportunities for new digital planning tools and services, including those we haven't even imagined yet. ## **What  we're standardising** Our definition of decision stage data captures everything needed to understand and act on the outcome of a planning application: * what the decision is: the outcome (for example: approved, rejected) and the reasons * what conditions apply: details of any conditions imposed * how and why the decision was reached: the process leading to the outcome * what the decision applies to: details of the application or proposal ## **How  we're building this** Unlike our work standardising the planning application submission stage where we could build on existing application forms, we're creating this new national specification from scratch. The approach we’re taking to achieve this is to: * design collaboratively to understand real needs by working directly with planning authorities, applicants, consultees and policy colleagues in our data standards community, to understand what decision data people actually want and need to use * build incrementally by only including elements where we have clear evidence of need * work iteratively and in the open. We’re sharing draft specifications early so we can iterate and improve them based on people’s feedback. The specifications are currently informed by 5 main sources: * legislation (particularly Articles 35 and 40 of the Planning Orders) * statistical returns on the planning process that local planning authorities have to complete * user research interviews * MHCLG requirements * related cross-government processes like appeals with the Planning Inspectorate and local land charges with HM Land Registry ## **Progress so far** We're building the data model piece by piece, with each element traceable back to user needs. ### **Decision  notices** We started with the core legal requirement – the decision notice itself. We've defined fields for linking to the application record, recording timings such as the decision date on the notice and the date when the application was first received by the local planning authority, to track whether deadlines were met, and capturing who made the decision – whether it was by a planning officer, a planning committee at the local planning authority or by the Planning Inspectorate on appeal. ### **Conditions** We've been looking at how conditions attach to decisions and can be discharged by one. For example, understanding whether conditions attached to a permission have been met, allowing development to proceed or continue in compliance with specific requirements. ## **What's  next** While we have made solid progress on what is the decision and what conditions apply, we're still working on the rest of the picture, including the application log capturing the steps leading to the decision, such as consultation periods and time extensions, the overall application status (including withdrawals and appeals), and the remaining data from the local authority statistical returns. ## **Join us** This work covers complex territory – from initial submissions through to post-decision actions like condition discharge. We're taking it step by step, tackling what we're confident about first, then using further research to understand more needs and model the more complicated scenarios. We're continuing our user research and are keen to speak to people who have valuable insights they can share. ### **We need your help:** * Volunteer for research: if you have deep experience with decision notices, planning conditions or specific statutory consultee requirements, please join the data standards community to get involved. The next session is on 21 January 2026, at 10.30am. * Explore our backlog: you can see what we're working on and the challenges we're tackling on our public project board. * Share your perspective: even if you can't commit to regular involvement, we'd love to hear from you. What decision data do you struggle to access? What would make your work easier? The more perspectives we hear from now, the better the standard will work for everyone. > This work is part of the Digital Planning programme. For more information about the Digital Planning programme, follow us on LinkedIn to stay connected, and subscribe to our newsletter for the latest updates.

The Electoral registration officer portal (EROP) is a secure web portal used by Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) – the officials responsible for maintaining accurate electoral registers in local authorities across the UK. The portal is used daily to process applications that directly affect people’s ability to vote. The Elections Digital team in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) recently completed a major transformation project called ‘Optimising Services’. This long-term initiative used digital principles, along with a phased rollout approach, to significantly improve EROP, making the portal more efficient, easier to maintain, and better equipped to support future electoral reforms. ## What is EROP used for?  The portal allows EROs to process applications for: * absent voting: postal and proxy votes, which allow voters to cast their ballot remotely or via a trusted person * overseas electors: UK citizens living abroad who are eligible to vote * Voter Authority Certificates (VACs): free photo ID for voters who do not have an accepted form of identification * anonymous electors: some electoral services and documentation for individuals who are registered without revealing their identity, often for safety reasons These services were introduced or expanded as a result of the Elections Act 2022, which brought changes to how elections are run in the UK. EROP was built specifically to support these new or expanded services. ## Why was Optimising Services needed? EROP was originally built quickly to comply with legislative deadlines born out of the Elections Act 2022. The requirements encompassed a variety of needs, including enabling all applications to be submitted online, with each service addressed individually. To meet these stringent deadlines and minimise technical complexity, EROP was constructed incrementally, beginning with the development of a VAC service. Consequently, each application type was created and managed as a separate service. As a result, within EROP: * elector applications could not be linked or searched for across services, causing inefficiencies for EROs * new features had to be built multiple times, once for each service * user experience varied depending on the service * development delivery timelines were longer, and maintenance was more difficult This fragmented structure made it harder to continue improving and maintaining the system or respond to policy changes or the needs of EROs. These needs are well documented by the team, making great use of user feedback. However, reacting to new feedback was challenging because the fragmented structure made changes hard to implement. To address these needs, the team outlined Optimising Services, a solution to create a centralised application system that could handle all services in a unified way. ## A phased rollout to build confidence When introducing major changes to a live public service, especially one as critical as electoral administration, stability and trust are paramount. EROP is used daily by local authorities to process applications that directly affect people’s ability to vote. Any disruption could have serious consequences, and switching over all services in EROP for all EROs at once would have carried risk. To manage this, the team opted to develop this work through a phased rollout. ## What the phased rollout looked like The rollout began with a group of 12 EROs from across England, Scotland and Wales. These early adopters started using the new system for some types of applications, while all other services remained on the legacy platform. This allowed the team to: * test the new system in a controlled environment * minimise risk by limiting changes to a small group of users at first * gather feedback from real users * address improvements before wider implementation * build trust with these 12 EROs by keeping them informed through regular engagement calls As confidence grew, the recently tested phase was rolled out to all EROs, and the phased launch rollout expanded to include other types of applications in phases. This created a steady flow of new services being tested, and now-tested services being released to the live product for everyone. ## Unlocking real-time benefits In addition to improving feature delivery times, a significant outcome of the project was our ability to unlock new improvements during the rollout itself, not just after the transition was complete. The benefits of Optimising Services enabled the team to deliver enhancements that previously would have required separate development work for each service. This meant that improvements were delivered faster and more efficiently, providing live benefits as part of this large-scale project. ## Completing the journey The final phase involved transitioning older elector applications to the new system and decommissioning the legacy services. This was done carefully, working through services to avoid disruption. By August 2025, the legacy infrastructure was successfully decommissioned. By this time, the new Optimising Services system had already processed over 2.1 million applications – a clear sign of its robustness and readiness for future demands. Optimising Services is a great example of how thoughtful design, collaboration and user-centred development can deliver lasting improvements to public services. It’s a milestone worth celebrating, and a foundation for future innovation in electoral services. This project was delivered by a multidisciplinary team, which included colleagues from our contracted supplier, Softwire Technology Ltd. Follow the progress of the Elections Digital team on the MHCLG Digital blog.

We're wrapping up another year for the MHCLG Digital Planning Programme – and what a year it’s been. Our journey to transform England's planning system has continued with new partnerships, innovations and momentum, building on foundations laid over recent years. Everything we do is aimed at giving our communities a planning system that is data-driven, more efficient and accessible, and supporting the government’s mission to deliver 1.5 million homes this Parliament. Huge thanks to the incredible network of Local Planning Authorities (LPAs) and partners in Open Digital Planning (ODP), the wider planning community, other government departments and colleagues at MHCLG. Your collaboration has been integral to our progress. This isn't about technology for technology's sake. It's about empowering the people and organisations that make planning happen every day. We've organised this year's highlights around the different groups we've worked to support – local authorities and tech companies, developers and the public. ## **Supporting Local Planning Authorities** Planning and digital professionals in local authorities are at the heart of what we do. We’re equipping them with the technology and support they need to make digital transformation business as usual. ### **Open Digital Planning  – sector-led improvement** ODP is our cross-sector transformation network, bringing together almost 200 forward-thinking councils to share best practice, increase data availability, adopt modern planning services and strengthen digital capabilities. Together ODP is creating a more efficient, data-driven and transparent planning system to better serve communities. A highlight was the recent event hosted by Medway Council, when more than 170 attendees from 57 councils gathered to share progress and insights. The Open Digital Planning community at the event in Medway ### **Supporting plan-making** Planning authorities have told us they need clearer guidance, consistency and more practical tools to speed up plan-making. In February we published a new dedicated home for plan-making resources on GOV.UK. ‘Create or update a local plan’ now acts as a central hub bringing together user-tested guidance and templates in one place. Last month we added to the content by publishing the first release of draft guidance for the new plan-making system. This guidance will grow into a trusted resource for planners across England, providing clarity and support on critical areas including site selection, consultation, evidence production and how to structure and present a local plan to make it clear and accessible for everyone. Early testing is already showing the impact – 83% of users told us the guidance gave them greater confidence in meeting Planning Inspectorate expectations, which is exactly what we set out to achieve. ### **Making  planning data consistent and accessible ** The Digital Planning Improvement Fund now supports 122 LPAs to publish data to the Planning Data platform – 70 of these joined this year. Through the fund and dedicated support, participating authorities join ODP and are accelerating the pace at which they publish their data, enabling data-driven decisions and accessible information. New authorities begin their journey with the Digital Planning Maturity Assessment – a tool that helps council teams understand their digital strengths and areas to improve. We're increasingly seeing LPAs return to repeat the exercise and track their progress. ### **Using  artificial intelligence (AI) to speed up data creation** Extract – the AI tool we’re developing with the Department for Science, Technology and Innovation’s (DSIT), Incubator for Artificial Intelligence (iAI) – was chosen to be part of the Prime Minister's AI Exemplar programme. It will help councils to digitise their planning maps and documents in minutes rather than hours – speeding up the time it takes to make consistent planning data and publish it openly to help make planning decisions and create local plans. 5 councils are now alpha testing the tool, with more to join private beta testing in the new year. Better access to high-quality data will help developers and councils realise the housing potential of land and make England's planning system more transparent. Extract identifying ground control points to georeference an old map. Image created using OpenStreetMaps. ### **Developing a spatial approach to infrastructure planning with better data and tools** We are developing the ALIGN spatial tool (government's national infrastructure spatial tool), in collaboration with the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority, so that local and central government will have a consistent way to test how policies, strategies and decisions interact spatially with infrastructure and to understand spatial trade-offs. A single digital platform it brings together strategies, data and tools, including AI, to identify local infrastructure needs and constraints for housing, industrial growth and land use scenarios. It is already supporting the government's growth agenda and place-based investment decisions, the 10-Year Infrastructure Strategy and aims to support Spatial Development Strategies. ### **Proving the impact of  modern planning software** Once their data is digitised, LPAs can adopt modern digital planning software to process applications more efficiently, using products such as PlanX – now live in 16 LPAs and the Back Office Planning System (BOPS) – with live pilots in 4 LPAs. These tools have been developed 'by planners, for planners'. This year, Medway Council, London Borough of Camden, London Borough of Barnet and London Borough of Lambeth have been involved in end-to-end pilots collecting valuable monitoring data to evaluate these ODP products. Results show significant efficiency gains – 40% time savings when validating and assessing householder applications. In Lambeth this translates to 35 minutes saved per application. ### **Solving real problems together** The 2-day Local Government Innovation Hackathon in Leeds, organised in partnership with Government Digital Service (GDS) and i.AI, brought together 150 planners, technologists and digital leaders, to tackle real-world planning challenges. Winning teams demonstrated their tools to Feryal Clark MP, when she was Minister for AI and Digital Government and have worked with i.AI engineers to discuss routes to scale their ideas. Teams collaborating at the hackathon ### **Making digital tools easier to adopt   ** Only 17% of LPAs believe they have the skills and knowledge to identify the right available digital planning tools. To address this, we seed-funded and launched the Digital Planning Directory, with the Digital Task Force for Planning, bringing all the digital planning suppliers together in one place. It now lists 121 digital service providers and has reached 36,000 users. Over the course of the year, the Directory has also organised a series of 'must see' online show and tells with LPAs demonstrating what's possible – all available to watch back. Dr Wei Yang OBE, CEO Digital Task Force for Planning at the launch of the Directory. Through our engagement with LPAs and suppliers and recent roundtables organised as part of our PropTech Growth programme, with the UK PropTech Association (UKPA), we know that procurement is a significant hurdle for adopting new technology. Last month the Directory launched a Procurement Resource Hub, and a benefits calculator based on the results from our innovation pilots, helping authorities make the business case and accelerate the adoption of digital planning tools. We’ve published some case studies showing the art of the possible  from Round 4 of the PropTech Innovation Fund: * East Hertfordshire District Council cut the call for sites processing time by 60% * North Tyneside saved 50% of staff time on consultation analysis with digital tools while boosting diverse engagement. * Greater Cambridge achieved 50% time savings on site assessment. Following on from Round 4, 22 LPAs are completing work on 12 pilots – demonstrating scalable solutions that can unlock sites and speed up plan-making processes. We’ll soon be receiving their practical implementation guides which we’ll share, providing authorities with another resource to help them confidently adopt innovative technology. ## **Supporting technology  companies** ### **Supporting property technology sector growth** Our commissioned Opportunity for PropTech report, published by the UK PropTech Association (UKPA) and PUBLIC earlier this year, shows the sector has the potential to grow by 20% by 2032 and generate revenue of approximately £72bn. To support this growth, we have evolved our approach with a series of partnerships, working with the Digital Task Force for Planning on the Digital Planning Directory, Geovation (part of Ordnance Survey), and the UKPA, to improve underlying market conditions. ### **Creating  open, standardised planning data** Technology companies need reliable, standardised planning data to build services that modernise planning. Our research however reveals critical barriers with inconsistent data standards and excessive time spent scraping and cleaning data. As one start-up told us, they want to spend time "working with the data, not trying to make the data work". Our Planning Data platform is addressing this, with at least 5 companies starting to use the platform’s data this year. It now hosts more than 400 datasets from England's LPAs, attracting 1.2 million weekly visitors and 20 million monthly hits – 4 times greater than this time last year. Richard Pope, author of Platformland, has highlighted the platform as an exemplar for UK government digital transformation – a 'template' to create better digital services and unlock private sector innovation. The platform’s open, standardised data is driving the development of modern planning software and supporting authorities with their local plan monitoring and delivery. We have also made significant progress on a data standard for planning application submissions and decisions, working with stakeholders in a data standards community. This will enable all LPAs to record and share information about planning applications consistently, providing a national picture of development. We’ve been testing the emerging data standards with established software suppliers. Technology companies will be able to use this standard to build new tools and scale them nationally. ## **Supporting developers  ** ### **Reducing planning costs  and overcoming key challenges** Many of our interventions directly support developers and other planning applicants. Better planning data helps to reduce the costs of bringing forward development by making information about site constraints available so they can identify sites and assess viability faster. Developers are also key partners in the PropTech Innovation Challenge, which we’re delivering with Geovation and aims to unlock housing delivery at scale. With £1.2 million of funding, 12 technology companies are working on pilots with developer and local authority partners addressing systemic barriers – including small site viability, access to land data, and infrastructure certainty. The pilots are due to present their impact in February 2026. Innovators from the 12 selected PropTech Innovation Challenge pilots at the September launch event. ### **Helping planning services to respond quickly and efficiently** One of the areas PlanX is transforming services is how councils handle pre-application advice. Doncaster Council pioneered a digital service that allows planners to specify required information upfront and ensures requests include relevant policy considerations from the start. The results show pre-application validation time reduced to less than half a day and the valid-to-decision period cut from 50 days to 29 days. These improvements mean developers receive faster, more useful feedback while officers can focus on providing quality advice. ## **Supporting public involvement in planning** Making planning more accessible to residents, businesses and community organisations remains a key focus area. ### **Making planning guidance accessible** The user-friendly PlanX interface asks simple questions and uses data to automatically generate planning guidance in minutes, helping people understand if they need planning permission, report planning breaches or submit applications. The content management system makes planning data and processes work better for planners and the public. ### **Improving public consultation and engagement through property technology** Our PropTech Innovation Fund has supported several pilots that are revolutionising how LPAs engage with residents in planning consultations.  A series of user-centred case studies have been published on GOV.UK as part of our plan-making guidance to demonstrate how councils have used digital tools to make local plan consultations more efficient and accessible. Greater Cambridge Shared Planning has partnered with the University of Liverpool to develop a bespoke AI model that summarised planning consultation comments across three supplementary planning document consultations in just 16 minutes – a task that took 18.5 hours previously. Officers still review every representation but can now focus on analysing the feedback and stakeholder engagement, creating faster feedback loops with communities. These innovations demonstrate how digital tools can make planning more inclusive and responsive, enabling residents to participate more easily on development plans that affect their areas. ## **Sharing our work and learning  with the planning sector** We've shared our progress at major industry events throughout the year. At the UK’s Real Estate Investment and Infrastructure Forum (UKREiiF) in May, we presented alongside Nottingham City Council and City of London Corporation, showcasing their work on digital planning and supported an engaging session in the UKPA PropTech Hub featuring live demos from suppliers in the Digital Planning Directory. Milan Bogunovic, Digital Planning Programme Director, speaking at the UK’s Real Estate Investment and Infrastructure Forum. We demonstrated Extract, at the Tech for Growth event in Paris, showing how the UK is harnessing AI to improve public services and presented at events with the Royal Town Planning Institute and the Planning Officers Society, encouraging more LPAs to embrace digital transformation. Our collaborative approach with LPAs in ODP has been recognised through shortlisting at both the Local Government Chronicle Awards (LGC) 2025 and the Digital Technology Leaders Awards 2025. While we didn't win, the LGC judges commended our "highly innovative partnership between national government and local planning authorities" and highlighted "the value of MHCLG seeding sector-led improvement in authorities". ## **Building momentum in 2025** This year has demonstrated what's possible when we work collaboratively across the planning sector. From councils publishing standardised data and adopting modern software, to technology companies building innovative solutions we're seeing the building blocks of a transformed planning system coming together. And with almost 200 councils now part of ODP, growing momentum in data standardisation, and AI tools like Extract set to launch widely next year, we're on track to deliver the efficient, transparent and accessible planning system that England needs to meet its ambitious housing targets. > We're looking for more research volunteers from across the sector. If you want to help shape our work, register to take part in our research sessions. > > For more information about the Digital Planning programme follow us on LinkedIn to stay connected, and subscribe to our newsletter for the latest updates.

The Funding Service is a multidisciplinary team in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) transforming the way the department delivers grants to councils and communities. It has already achieved a lot in its mission to make grant delivery more cost-effective, consistent and user-focused. As 2025 draws to a close, the Funding Service is at a turning point. Over the past few years, our focus has been on responding to user feedback for the products we had already built and, more recently, on the critical task of creating a new digital service that could scale. The general election, change of government and spending review created a great deal of change in grant funding policy, including periods of uncertainty and lower-than-expected demand for the service. This meant we sometimes had a very small number of active users, and it could be hard to judge what was a must-have for multiple users and should be prioritised, versus a nice-to-have for a single user. Now we have a larger and more diverse group of users, our focus is prioritising based on analysed research and user needs, rather than nice-to-haves, to avoid creating an overly bespoke and technically unstable service. We’ve matured as a service and as a team, too. We’ve improved our ways of working by consolidating agile and user-centred design best practices. We've created an Insights Library to help us organise and prioritise user insights at each point of the journey. This sets us off on the right foot to solve a whole problem for users, end-to-end, and look at opportunities to integrate, either side of our current products. ## Our guiding values We’ve agreed on 6 values to help us prioritise and address the biggest pain points affecting the biggest number of users first. ### **1. Go  wide, not deep** We start by doing the essentials for each part of the grant lifecycle, then move quickly to cover the whole journey. We won’t go feature-heavy on any single stage until we’ve created a minimum viable product (MVP). Alongside building services, our focus will be on integrating with tools that already exist. If they don’t meet our users’ needs, we need to be clear about why that is and what we will build instead. ### **2. Integrate,  integrate, integrate** We need to connect MHCLG and non-MHCLG products so that users don't feel the seams between services or have to enter the same data twice. That means using high-quality reference data wherever it exists and avoiding redundant or inconsistent copies. Good integration isn’t just about technology; it’s about making the whole journey feel smooth (more on this below!). ### **3.  Design for the seams** We know users move between multiple services. Our job is to make those transitions easier to navigate for users. That means gathering insight about the whole journey, not just the products we’ve built. As Richard Pope puts it in his book Platformland, designing for the seams gives us “a way of revealing decisions, rules, data and accountability to users while not abandoning the aspiration for simplicity”. ### **4. Prioritise based on multiple user needs** We need to identify the top priority based on user needs, deliver it quickly to the agreed standard, and then move on. This approach helps us avoid spreading ourselves too thin and means we’re creating value where it's needed most. To support this, we’re embedding new feedback loops into our process: synthesised feedback and user research findings feed into an Insights Library, which informs product prioritisation. By taking this evidence-based approach, we can make more informed decisions and deliver meaningful improvements faster. ### **5. Release new things fast** We’ll release quickly, get real feedback, and iterate. It’s better to launch something useful now than wait for perfect later. ### **6. Be ready for policy changes** Our team and our products need to be flexible and ready to quickly adapt to changes in policy. ## Identifying integration opportunities and joining up Policy teams delivering grants and grant recipients currently need to engage with several teams and services both within MHCLG and in wider government during the funding lifecycle. This may include: * Government Grants Information System (GGIS) * Common Data Platform * Find a grant * Apply for a grant * Access grant funding * Delta This can lead to a disjointed, time consuming, and often confusing experience for users (and for our team working with grants, too). The Funding Service journey and related digital services Our ambition for 2026 into 2027 is an** ** end-to-end user journey that feels friction-free for the user. Over the next few months, we'll be exploring the processes, policies and teams which underpin these products to ensure there is a good link-up to support the user experience. ## Our work in the new year and beyond A new year brings new challenges, but also opportunities! We know our plan is ambitious, which is why we’ve already started. Our Service Insights team have been busy: * reviewing the end-to-end service maps, synthesising what we know and highlighting what we don’t​ * framing the main problems and pain points using existing user research and identifying assumptions​ The team is now working on: * understanding related work by other digital teams that could impact on the funding lifecycle * exploring the opportunities – this may include service or tool integration, or process improvements * scoring opportunities based on user need, desirability, feasibility and viability * producing opportunity assessments, outlining size, scope, and potential impact * playing back opportunity assessments and recommendations to the senior leadership team and product teams ## How to get involved We can’t do this alone, which is why we’ll be working closely with teams across MHCLG and wider government. We plan to engage with teams working on products our users may interact with to see how we can integrate and avoid duplication. Whether you’re in MHCLG or another department, please get in touch to learn more about our work at FundingService@communities.gov.uk. Find out more about the objectives and principles that guide our work in digital.

The System Design team at the Ministry of Housing Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) includes designers, researchers and analysts. We bring user-centred design and systems thinking skills to complex building safety challenges. We work with policy teams on a range of projects, applying strategic systems thinking. Earlier this year, we completed a project to understand the housing safety and quality system and provide a shared view of that complex system to better inform policy development and decision making. You can see the outputs of this work in our most recent blog post. This work highlighted knowledge gaps and laid the foundations for our next project. ## The ask In June, we supported the development of policy thinking about the future of how the built environment is regulated. This was informed by the recommendations set out in the Grenfell Tower Inquiry’s Phase 2 Report. We were asked to build evidence for what residents might need from a new regulator. We did in-depth qualitative user research to understand residents' experiences and needs around housing safety, quality and its regulation. The research looked at how residents access support and view the role of regulators, how much trust they have in the system and the role consumer power plays in how they make decisions. You can read the full report from this research in our GitHub repository. Housing is a fundamental need. It affects everything – from education and work to relationships and community life. When housing is unsafe or poor quality, it can seriously harm people’s lives. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a simple model explaining what people generally need to live well and feel fulfilled. It illustrates how important it is to have basic needs met. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs ## Where we started Before starting user research with residents, we reviewed what we already knew. That involved secondary research, stakeholder interviews, and conversations with internal policy teams. Then we did 40 in-depth user research interviews. We spoke to residents across England, from different backgrounds and housing situations. In each session, we asked questions about housing safety, quality and what residents expect when asking for help. ## What we learnt Residents think about safety and quality in many ways. From how secure they feel to the materials used in their homes. But they don’t always feel confident prioritising or assessing these things when choosing a place to live. How residents raise issues depends on their housing type, how confident they feel and their socio-economic background. But many face the same problem: it’s hard to find someone who’s responsible and willing to help. Most people don’t escalate problems beyond their landlord or housing provider. This is often because they’ve had bad experiences in the past or don’t know how to get help. Residents in unstable housing, with a disability or who speak English as a second language face even more barriers. Many don’t believe they’ll be listened to or that anything will change. ### Trust is fragile Trust in housing is easily broken – and hard to rebuild. Many residents told us they don’t trust people involved in housing. This included government bodies, and ranged from landlords to contractors because of past failures and poor experiences. We found that, to rebuild trust in an organisation, two types of trust are needed: * **Social trust** : believing someone has good intentions * **Cognitive trust** : believing someone is competent and reliable, based on evidence and experience Residents’ faith in those responsible for safety and quality of their homes is currently low due to poor experiences and past failings. Residents feel that many organisations put profit over quality and safety, and that little is done to hold bad actors to account. Residents expect regulators to make sure safety and quality standards are met and to hold others to account. But they need to see evidence that regulators are doing this. It is possible to build trust within the housing system. Community groups and Citizens Advice were often mentioned as trusted organisations. Residents trust these organisations because they put residents’ wellbeing first and follow through on promises. ### Regulation needs to work for residents Residents don’t expect to have direct contact with regulators, if others like landlords or agents are doing their jobs properly. Instead, they expect that people and processes are regulated so that they work first time. And that if things go wrong, they can be resolved with those responsible. The research we’ve done is being used to help shape the policies and design of the new regulator being introduced by MHCLG to meet one of the recommendations set out in the Grenfell Inquiry Phase 2 Report. The Inquiry's report describes that the recommendation intends to consolidate how the sector is regulated and drive culture change in the industry. Ultimately this will deliver better outcomes for residents. MHCLG is clear that the new regulator must protect residents by making sure the buildings residents live in are safe, and the wider housing system must support the regulator to do this. ## Want to learn more or get involved? If you’d like to learn more about how we are applying system design to building safety challenges, you can access our maps and reports on our GitHub repository. You can sign up to take part in future user research sessions. For more information, contact us at: SystemDesignTeam@communities.gov.uk.

Local plans are the backbone of England’s planning system, shaping how places grow and develop. But the current system isn’t working as we need it to. Many plans take over 7 years to produce and cost councils millions of pounds, putting pressure on local resources and delaying the delivery of homes and infrastructure local communities need. ## **A new approach to plan-making** Earlier this year, the government gave an update on the steps being taken to achieve universal coverage of local plans and realise the full potential of planning reforms initiated in 2024. On 27 November, Housing and Planning Minister Matthew Pennycook confirmed details of a new plan-making system in a Written Ministerial Statement. The Minister outlined how the reforms will make it easier for councils to shape development in their area and play their part in delivering the government’s target of 1.5 million homes. The new local plan regulations underpinning the new approach to plan-making will come into force early next year, establishing a faster system with shorter and clearer local plans that communities and the development sector can rely on. At the heart of this reform is a new 30-month timeline for creating and adopting local plans, supporting the government’s commitment to achieving universal local plan coverage. Diagram illustrating the 30-month plan-making process. Find out more about the timeline and the details of each step. ## **Supporting the new plan-making system** MHCLG’s Digital Planning programme and Development Plans team, in collaboration with the Planning Inspectorate, have been working to address the pain points and inefficiencies within plan-making to help deliver a simpler, faster and more accessible new system of local plans. In February 2025 we published a new dedicated home of resources on GOV.UK - Create or update a local plan, bringing together guidance to provide greater clarity, consistency and certainty to the plan-making process. We’ve now added, in draft, the first tranche of detailed draft guidance to help authorities preparing plans under the new system get started as soon as possible. We have prioritised resources for the earliest stages of plan-making so local planning authorities can understand how the new system will work and what they can do now to prepare. ## **Developed with users at its heart** What makes this planning guidance different is how we've developed it – with the primary users, the plan-makers. We’ve developed every piece directly with local planning authorities and planning inspectors. The intensive, iterative testing has shaped the content, structure and tools to ensure they work in practice and not just in theory. > “It has been a pleasure to be asked to contribute to the work in shaping the new plan-making process.  MHCLG has shown a clear interest in understanding how experienced practitioners working on the ground expect the new system and guidance to operate in practice as part of a large-scale data-gathering exercise.” **Phil Hylton, Central Lincolnshire Local Plans Manager  ** This user-centred approach is reflected in the practical tools we've created. It sets out how local councils are expected to prepare their local plan and provides practical resources to support preparation. For Gateway 1 – the first of a series of checkpoints designed to help local councils to stay on track to deliver plans within 30 months – we have developed ready-to-use templates including the Gateway 1 summary template, to remove guesswork from critical stages. Our site selection guidance walks planners through identification, assessment and allocation with step-by-step clarity. These are working tools shaped by the people who will use them every day. The result is a fundamental shift towards making local planning work for everyone involved. Councils get the clarity and tools they need to deliver efficiently. Communities get plans faster that respond to their current needs. And nationally we can move more quickly to achieving full plan coverage across England, critical to unlocking the types of development our country needs. We're enormously grateful to all the local authority officers who generously volunteered their time and expertise over the many months of testing. ## **Learning from authorities using digital tools** Local planning authorities are already discovering the potential of technology and digital tools to transform plan-making. Case studies showing how councils have used innovative tools as part of the PropTech Innovation Fund to speed up local plan creation are currently available and signposted to on Local Digital, with user-centred versions soon to be published on Create or update a local plan. These real-world examples illustrate the practical benefits and efficiency gains possible. ## **Next steps** We will review the guidance and make any necessary revisions and updates as the new system is implemented, and related regulations and policy are confirmed. These resources form part of a growing digital offer to support plan makers to deliver local plans faster. It will be followed by the timely release of tools and services both next year and beyond. As local planning authorities start using these resources, we'll also be reviewing and refining the guidance based on real experience. We're actively seeking feedback from plan-makers as they work with the new system. Each guidance page includes instructions on how to share their thoughts, suggestions and questions. This feedback will help us iterate the guidance to better support users through this transition and ensure it meets the practical needs of those using it every day. ## **Get involved** As we've explored in this post, our research volunteers are at the heart of how the Digital Planning programme is transforming planning for the 21st century. We're looking for volunteers from across the planning and development sector to take part in research sessions. Whether you're a planning officer, developer, landowner, planning consultant or technology vendor, your insights will directly shape our work. Register your interest to take part. > Keep up to date with the Digital Planning programme by following the programme on LinkedIn and subscribing to the newsletter.

Every year, International Volunteer Day highlights the important role volunteering plays in strengthening communities and supporting positive change. In this post, 3 of our colleagues reflect on their volunteering experience: what motivates them, how their contributions support the people and places around them, and how it connects to their professional values. ## Jaimella Espley, Senior Delivery Manager, Common Tools I’m a senior delivery manager working across programmes in the Common Tools team. We build reusable tools for the department, helping teams be more efficient. I’m a volunteer bird surveyor for the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO), Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), National Trust and Derbyshire Wildlife Trust. Living in the Peak District National Park, I monitor sites close to my home. I do regular counts of wetland birds, breeding birds and rare upland species such as curlew, lapwing and snipe. The data generated helps map long-term population trends and inform conservation strategies. I believe spending time in nature and watching birds supports all the 5 ways of wellbeing, helping us connect, learn and grow. I love being able to play a tiny part in helping preserve local species and wild places for future generations. Learning to identify a bird in flight by a song or call is an intellectual challenge. Learning to make nest boxes takes me out of my comfort zone. Getting up in the dark can sometimes be a struggle. It’s always worthwhile, when I hear the dawn chorus start in an ancient woodland or a curlew calling as the sun rises over the moorland. ## Gideon Goldberg, Lead Developer, Funding Service I’m currently a lead developer working on the Funding Service; you can find out more about what I do and my experience in my role in this blog post. I volunteer with the careers education charity Inspire. Their mission is to inspire children and young people across London and beyond through encounters with employers. Most recently I took part in their ‘Pathways to Professionalism’ day. It was great to be able to share my professional experience, especially with a diverse group of girls at Plashet School in Newham (one of the most deprived boroughs in London according to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government's (MHCLG’s) own data). Anything we can do to inspire these students to improve their social mobility is doubly valuable. The Year 7 students were incredibly engaged, always putting their hands up and got fully involved with the varied activities we facilitated throughout the day. It was particularly rewarding when I asked the students if they knew what a civil servant was (a question that usually gets a stunned silence) and one girl responded her sister was a civil servant and that she had a cool job! I’ll let the students have the last word with their feedback on what they learned during the day: > “That everything is useful and will help you in one way or another” > > “How to write an email and to pay attention to details” > > “You should always be resilient and never be afraid to ask for help.” > > “There are many paths for you in life.” > > “When I get my job, I need to dress smart casual.” > > “To talk to new people” > > “To always be resilient and never give up” ## Emma Crowe, Head of Communications, Digital Planning I work in the Digital Planning team at MHCLG, focused on transforming England’s planning system to enable more homes to be built for our communities. For almost 3 years I’ve been volunteering with GoodGym, a nationwide community that helps you get fit by doing good. We’re runners, walkers and cyclists, who combine regular exercise with making a difference in our communities. I’m a member of my local group in Kingston upon Thames. My family now know Tuesday is my Group GoodGym night when we run 2.5km to a task, spend an hour doing a good deed, then run back to our meeting place. It's far better than spending an hour in the gym in my opinion! What motivates me is simple: I get to meet local people of all ages and backgrounds, work on a range of rewarding tasks helping my local community whilst getting fit. The variety of tasks never ceases to amaze me. Recently, we've completed a deep clean of Kingston Foodbank, cleaned graffiti near a community centre, helped move planters and sheds for a community garden, and created seasonal window displays for the British Heart Foundation! We've also cleaned bikes for Full Cycle, a community bike project which supplies refurbished bikes to refugees and those on low incomes. One of my favourite tasks took place this week – putting up Christmas decorations at a supported living home for young people. Many hands really do make light work – it’s incredible what a small group of us can achieve in an hour. As a civil servant, volunteering where I live with a charity like GoodGym connects directly to my professional values. I see firsthand how local initiatives strengthen communities and how small contributions create real impact. Here in the MHCLG and the Civil Service, we believe in making a positive impact beyond the workplace among the communities we serve. That's why civil servants in MHCLG get up to 6 days of fully paid volunteering leave per year. Find out more about what it’s like to work in Digital in MHCLG.

The System Design team at the Ministry of Housing Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) includes designers, researchers and analysts. We bring user-centred design and systems thinking skills to complex building safety challenges. Our work involves doing projects with policy teams and strategic systems thinking. Where we live has a huge impact on our lives. The safety, quality and sustainability of our homes is part of a vast and complex system. Our first big job as a new team was to help make sense of that system, and support others in the department to have a shared view of that complexity to better inform policy development and decision making. ## What we did Example of our high-level mapping of the roles involved in the housing safety and quality system. You can access and explore the full map in our GitHub repository. At the end of 2024, we were asked to visualise and research how the housing safety and quality system is working in practice. Our first step was to gain a base understanding of the people in the system, their roles and responsibilities, and what policies say should be happening. When we say ‘people in the system’, that includes everyone from regulators, to people working in construction, those providing insurance and finance, and of course residents. We then did primary research with people working in the system to understand their behaviours, relationships and experiences. We used our research to map how different parts of the system interact, understand how people experience the system, and identify levers for change. We turned our research into tools and reports to ensure our policy colleagues can easily access insights to make decisions and develop policies for the future. Visit our GitHub repository to view the resources resulting from our research. ## What we learnt ### **Regulatory complexity is currently difficult to navigate** Example of our mapping of who regulates the system. You can access a copy of this map in our GitHub repository. When mapping the different organisations and activities involved in regulating and setting standards within the system, we found over 75 organisations from government regulators to private standard setting organisations. Those organisations enforce and work to over 70 pieces of legislation. The people who design, build and maintain every home need to navigate that complexity. Depending on their role, professionals might also work to professional standards as well. We heard that complexity and ambiguity in regulations has left some people unsure of their roles, responsibilities and expectations of others, even where they understand and agree with a policy's underlying aims. All of the insights, reports and maps from our work support policymakers to consider the whole regulatory landscape when they’re designing and bringing in changes. ### **Role-based profiles help identify impacts beyond the surface** Examples of profiles based on what we heard during our research in the voice of those we spoke to. You can access this information in our GitHub repository. We heard about issues relating to recruiting, training and retaining skilled staff across key roles. There are many systemic root causes for these issues, which we are looking to explore further. In particular, local and national regulators reported capacity and capability struggles which can impact regulation  enforcement activity, proactive work and the ability to build trust between teams. We created role-based profiles to help policy and delivery teams think about the changes they are making to the system, and how it impacts different roles. They also help policy teams to think about the cumulative impact of changes in the system, and how this adds up over time. ## People are always at the heart of the system People are always at the heart of the system. Housing quality and safety impacts residents the most, but they often have the least influence within the system. Vulnerable residents can be worried about and experience more barriers when accessing support. Concern about and perception of risk also impact how people – from regulators to residents – make decisions across the system. It’s people who ultimately shape activity in the system. Their actions will be shaped by policies and services, but also by their own experiences. So, we need to design with people's emotions, relationships and perceptions in mind. That’s why our team is bringing user-centred research and system design into policy processes. We want to ensure that the experiences of those most affected by changes are considered when designing policy, and that the people at the heart of the system are being supported. ## Learn more If you want to learn more, you can access versions of our maps and reports on our GitHub repository. This includes: * our final report and user research report * profiles that give a snapshot of the behaviours, needs and context of different people working in the system * maps that show the landscape of how the system is regulated * maps that show the different places people live, and the different roles involved in managing some of those places * maps that show what influences whether buildings are maintained well * a map that gives you a summary of people in the system If you’d like to get involved in our research, or hear more about our work, you can sign up to take part in our user research sessions or email us at SystemDesignTeam@communities.gov.uk.

Faster and more efficient planning relies on open, accessible and trustworthy planning data. But data alone is not enough. Councils, planning applicants and the software providers supporting both in our planning system, need an agreed standard for how the information they exchange can be structured. This will help improve certainty for all parties and enable modern, digital systems to talk to each other and empower better decision making. Data standards are emerging through the Digital Planning programme’s work with the data standards community. Significant progress has been made on planning application submissions, with draft specifications now at pilot stage and work is beginning on standardising how decisions are recorded. But how will these specifications work with core planning software systems used by local authorities? What will development management services look like once these standards are introduced? And what support might technology companies need to prepare for the transition and plan for wide customer rollout? To answer these questions, we’re funding 5 pilot projects representing the main back-office planning systems used by local planning authorities across England to process planning applications. ## **The pilot partnerships** All projects are led by local planning authorities, who understand the importance of modernising digital planning services to better serve their communities, each paired with a key software supplier: * Dorset Council, working with DEF * Leeds City Council, working with Idox * London Borough of Hounslow, working with NEC * London Borough of Redbridge, working with IEG4 * Salford City Council, working with Arcus Global These partnerships cover a range of locations and system types, to give us broad insight into how the standards will perform in different contexts. The Planning Portal is also participating in this work. Updates will be shared widely including with the with data standards community. This work is critical to help the standards mature from design discussions to real life applications. ## **A phased approach** The 5 pilots have structured the work into 3 phases: analysis, testing and preparation for transition. During the analysis phase, the aim is to assess the impact of proposed specifications on current technology and processes. As part of this, the project teams are working together to identify potential challenges and explore how these might be addressed in collaboration with the data standards community. We want to make the entire planning application and permission process data rich through standardisation. We are identifying the minimum viable set of standards needed to create a data-rich ecosystem without disrupting existing processes. In the testing phase suppliers and planning teams will see proposed changes materialise and build the evidence and knowledge needed that other Local Planning Authorities can learn from to upgrade their own planning software and IT systems in future. The final phase of these projects, expected in early 2026, will see the projects consolidate these learnings so they can be made accessible to all. Software suppliers will also use what they’ve learned to plan support for their customer base. ## **Preparing for data standards adoption** The work we’re doing now is helping the industry prepare for changes needed to comply with emerging data standards due to be introduced by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. This work will make it easier for planning officers to access consistent, high-quality information, and for applicants and communities to see clearer, more transparent decisions. Over time, open and standardised data will support more modular, interoperable and responsive planning services. Active participation by different parties in community discussions has made a significant contribution. When government and stakeholders work towards a common goal, it becomes far more achievable. ## **Get involved** Join the data standards community if you want to help shape the planning applications data specifications. You can sign up and find information, updates and relevant links about this work on the planning applications submissions project homepage. > Keep up to date with the Digital Planning programme by  following the programme on LinkedIn and subscribing to the newsletter. > > The Digital Planning team is conducting user research to improve planning and its associated industries. We need volunteers from across the planning and development sector, including developers, landowners, planning consultants, planning officers and technology suppliers. Register your interest to take part.

The Indices of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) rank over 33,000 small areas across the country by levels of deprivation. It’s one of the department’s most important and widely used datasets and Accredited Official Statistics – shaping policy, guiding funding and informing decisions from a wide range of users. It even influences individuals’ decisions, for example when they’re deciding where to live. Our goal was simple – to make this data, and the insights it holds, more accessible than ever. We set out to make it easier for everyone to find, use and understand deprivation data through our dedicated site. ## What we built After reviewing user needs, feedback from previous releases and input from stakeholders, we began shaping our designs. Through iteration and testing, we arrived at 3 core elements that would define the experience. * **Area summaries.** We know that not everyone is familiar with deprivation indices, so after a simple postcode search on the site, users are taken to a page all about their neighbourhood. We developed algorithms that translate the data into straightforward descriptions, supported by charts and maps, to help users understand what’s driving deprivation in a given area – whether it's crime, income, or other factors. * **Interactive maps.** To support exploration, we built maps that let users view spatial patterns across the country and to zoom right in on specific neighbourhoods. Users can select multiple areas to compare and quantify differences – useful for planning services or understanding local contexts. * **Flexible download options.** Research showed that many users just want to get their hands on the data – but needs varied. Some want the full dataset, others prefer specific extracts. So, we’ve created something that lets people get what suits their needs – whether it’s data about a specific set of postcodes, a local authority area, a specific domain of deprivation, or all of them. A quick demo of the explorer showing how users can enter a postcode and explore deprivation patterns in an area. We strived to make everything feel connected – an intuitive flow from one part of the site to the next. For example, if someone picks an area on the map, they’re then prompted to check out the summary for that spot. Our aim was to guide users, without making them think too hard. ## Designed to support democracy  It’s early days, but we’ve already begun to see the tool used in real-world settings, supporting democracy, debate and decision making, and hearing lots of anecdotes of how the service is being used. The tool is being adopted by a diverse range of users from local authorities, policymakers and community groups to researchers and the media using the insights to enhance their work or spark discussions in public forums. ## Performant and reusable tech This project marked a technical milestone for our team and the department, being the first time our Svelte component library powered a live project. You can read more detailed thinking about this in our blog post, but as a quick recap it means: **Server-side rendering, strong performance, excellent search engine optimisation (SEO)** : SvelteKit makes it easy for us to efficiently server-side render the many pages (one for each of the 33,755 neighbourhoods), meaning they’re quicker to load, more accessible, and can be more easily indexed by search engines. This approach allows us to avoid common pitfalls with large data-driven apps, such as slow calls to servers, heavy client-side number crunching (for example, based on the user's inputted postcode) and dynamic content which is difficult to index.__ The SEO benefits mean this content gets higher visibility in Google searches, helping more users get to the insights more quickly. **Built-in reactivity:** Svelte allows us to easily manage users' selections – it helps us serve personalised and localised content without repeatedly asking for selections, or without needing to write lots of complex code to save and track those selections. **High levels of customisation** : By building the component library from the ground up we have full control over the experience. This allows us to react to small user interaction improvements as a result of user feedback, and better meet accessibility requirements. These can be challenging to meet when working with dynamic and visual content. Beyond the Svelte component library, we’ve also been working hard to set up shared infrastructure to host this IMD project. Importantly, this is also reusable and is already being incorporated to support future projects. All of this means that, as a team and a department, we now have lots of the building blocks in place to deliver these types of projects and services more efficiently and effectively than ever before. So, from now on, users can expect faster, better and easier-to-access insights! ## We’d love your feedback This is all work in progress, and we’re keen to keep improving. If you’ve used the deprivation app, we’d love to hear what you think. Feedback, ideas, bug reports – all welcome. If you’re curious about the tech behind it, want to reuse parts of it, or fancy collaborating on the component library, we’d love that too. Drop us a line at dataprojects@communities.gov.uk. If you’re interested in the full statistical release, it’s available online: English indices of deprivation 2025 - GOV.UK . The brilliant multi-disciplinary team behind this work includes: Andrew Hillman, Camilla Jones, Duncan Bradley, Glenn Herbert, Hayley Swain, Ibrahim Haizel, Miles Hinchliffe, Mike Lister, Navneet Dalton and Tim Kershaw.