AI won’t solve the planning recruitment crisis, but it can help

At first glance, the recruitment crisis in planning and the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) appear to be two separate issues: one is about people, the other is about technology. But, increasingly I think they are part of the same question: what kind of profession is planning morphing into as a result of AI, and how do we make this appeal to a younger generation?

The ambition/capacity gap

The recruitment challenge is becoming increasingly urgent question gets ever more urgent. Andy Burnham has entered Downing Street with a strong commitment to regional growth and delivery, specifically delivery of council housing. The government is committed to 1.5 million homes in England this Parliament, but the latest official housing supply figures recorded just 208,600 net additional dwellings in 2024-25, down 6% on the previous year. Furthermore, the government has promised 150 major economic infrastructure decisions by the end of this Parliament alongside commitments on clean power, devolution, new town, regeneration, logistics, laboratories, data centres and town-centre renewal.

This ambitious agenda depends on local plans, site assessments, viability work, consultation, committee reports, legal agreements, infrastructure planning and negotiation. In other words, it depends on planners.

The difficulty is that the profession is already stretched. The MHCLG’s 2025 Local Authority Planning Capacity and Capability Survey found that 79% of local planning authorities reported recruitment difficulties, 93% reported skills gaps and planning departments recorded 766 vacancies among respondents. Development management vacancies were especially exposed: 57% of departments had at least one senior vacancy and 49% had at least one entry or mid-level vacancy. The same survey found that digital planning and CIL, Section 106 and viability assessment were among the most commonly cited skills gaps.

The pipeline problem

This is not simply a public sector problem, though that is where the data is clearest and the pressure is most visible. The RTPI’s State of the Profession 2025 report found that public-sector planners were more than twice as likely as their private-sector counterparts to report their team lacking capacity frequently or all the time. But 31% of private- sector planners still said their team lacked capacity frequently or all the time. The private- sector is not watching this from the sidelines, it is drawing from the same small labour market and faces its own succession risks.

In my roles as chair of the RTPI Eastern Region for 2026 and as an External Examiner for the University of Hertfordshire’s MSc in Sustainable Planning, I am particularly interested in the planner pipeline. We have good candidates entering the profession, including graduates who discover planning after studying geography, politics, economics, environmental science or other subjects. The fact is that planning is still a profession that many people find by accident.

There are routes that work. Pathways to Planning has delivered more than 200 new planners to more than 100 local planning authorities since 2023 but, by contrast, the restriction of Level 7 Chartered Town Planner apprenticeship funding for those aged over 21 creates a deficit. According to the RTPI, that route has been supporting around 200 planners a year into the profession, around 70% of them in local government. Department for Education figures suggest that only 17% of current apprentices would meet the new funding criteria. As the RTPI have pointed out in their response, this narrows the route at exactly the point when we need wider entry.

AI as support, not substitute

The good news is that AI can help address the problem. It cannot replace professional judgement, political sensitivity, or accountability, which remain very human skills. But AI can remove some of the tasks that, up until now, have drawn planners away from that aspect of their work.

The government’s Extract tool is a good example of the direction of travel. Around 350,000 planning applications are submitted each year in England and the government estimates that 250,000 hours are spent by planning officers manually checking documents. Extract is intended to convert old planning records and maps into usable digital data. A separate AI-supported planning decision tool, being tested with Barnet, Camden and Dorset, aims to halve the time taken to process routine householder applications by triaging submissions, summarising key information and giving officers an initial assessment to review.

These are not minor efficiencies. They point to a different division of labour. If AI can help validate applications, summarise representations, identify relevant policies, map constraints, check basic compliance and structure reports, then planners can spend more time on design quality, community engagement and the planning balance. With my private- sector hat on, I would hope officers can get more time to negotiate and discuss with applicants, rather than rushing through decisions to hit a government target.

A new skills mix

Could AI therefore make the profession more appealing? Few people enter planning because they want to spend their career processing paperwork. They enter because they are interested in places, people, development, environment and public decision-making. If technology can reduce the routine burden, the profession can offer a clearer promise: you will use evidence and judgement to shape places.

There is, however, a training gap. A brief look at RTPI-accredited planning degrees found that explicit AI or PropTech content is still rare. Wider digital planning, GIS, data analytics and decision-support content is more visible, especially at master’s level, but the picture is patchy. Geography degrees are often stronger on GIS, remote sensing, coding, spatial data and machine learning, but these skills are not always translated into statutory planning practice.

Yet, the future planner will need both sets of skills: we cannot divide the profession into traditional planners who understand policy, law, and judgement and digital specialists who understand data and tools. The planner of the future needs both. They will need to know how to test an AI-generated summary, how to spot bias, how to question a dataset and how to decide when a model is not enough. As AI changes, so will the skills required to use it.

Trust before speed

Inevitably there are risks attached to the proliferation of AI. AI-generated objections can add to the volume of material councils must process. AI-generated planning statements can sound confident while being wrong, causing distrust. Automated consultation can reach more people but can also narrow the conversation if it assumes too much about what residents want to hear. Standardised digital processes can improve consistency but, can also flatten local distinctiveness.

It is the role of local authority planners or planning consultants to ensure that appropriate safeguards are in place. AI-generated analysis should be traceable to its source. Officers should know what documents have been used, what the tool has produced and what has been amended; applicants and residents should be told when AI has been used in a material way; members should be able to ask how an AI summary was checked and above all, the planning officer must remain accountable for the recommendation.

A profession worth joining

The reconciliation, then, is not between people and machines. It is between capacity and purpose. Planning needs more people, better retention, stronger graduate routes, apprenticeships that work for the real age profile of entrants and better digital training. It also needs AI and PropTech to be used with care, confidence and professional discipline.

If we get that balance right, AI will be one of the ways we make planning a more attractive and effective profession. It can give planners time to negotiate better outcomes, explain difficult choices and think properly about growth, infrastructure and place. That is not a substitute for recruitment, but an opportunity to rebuild the profession’s capacity.