UK Planning Gateway was built by people who have had to submit planning applications as part of practice delivery, across different local planning authorities, with real deadlines and real clients. This beta was our opportunity to test the workflow under everyday practice conditions, and to improve the parts that only reveal themselves when a platform is used repeatedly across live projects.
From September to December 2025, we worked closely with Lapworth Architects, a Birmingham-based practice with over 30 years’ experience and more than 6,000 planning applications submitted over time. Lapworth acted as our beta testing practice, using UK Planning Gateway on live submissions and feeding back candidly on what slowed them down, what caused friction, and what would genuinely make a difference for architects, planning technicians, and agents.
Over the collaboration period, Lapworth submitted 17 applications through the platform, across:
- Birmingham City Council (BCC)
- Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council
- Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council
- Wyre Forest District Council
- Coventry City Council
Application types submitted during the beta included householder, full planning, prior approval, change of use, variation of conditions, listed building consent, and related consent workflows.
This case study sets out what we tested, what we learned, what improved, and what those early results mean for professional teams submitting planning applications day to day.
Why we ran a practice beta (and what “success” looks like)
Professional submission is not difficult because the form fields are complicated. It is difficult because it is repetitive, fragmented, and sensitive to small omissions. The time cost comes from admin that compounds: finding council expectations, checking validation lists, renaming files, re-keying common information, producing supporting statements, and managing sign-off across a team.
For this beta, we defined success in practical terms:
- Reduce avoidable admin time without introducing risk
- Catch common omissions earlier so fewer submissions rely on last-minute fixes
- Make council-specific expectations clearer inside the workflow, not hidden in separate webpages
- Support consistent outputs across a practice so applications look and read as a coherent pack
Lapworth’s role was not to “learn” submission. It was to pressure-test whether UK Planning Gateway makes an experienced team faster, more consistent, and more confident before they press submit.
The submissions: range, councils, and real-world variety
Across the 17 submissions, the spread of councils and application types was deliberate. If a submission platform only works smoothly for one council and one type, it does not help practices who submit across multiple local authorities and project contexts.
During the beta, Lapworth submitted across:
Councils: Birmingham, Sandwell, Solihull, Wyre Forest, Coventry
Application types: householder, full planning, prior approval, change of use, variation of conditions, listed building consent
That variety matters, because different application types pull different tasks into focus:
- Householder applications can expose repeat admin and document packaging friction.
- Full planning highlights consistency, narrative quality, and supporting document control.
- Prior approval tests clarity around what is required and what is not.
- Change of use and variation of conditions exposes how often teams must reference previous decisions, conditions, and project history.
- Listed building consent brings higher stakes for supporting information, heritage documentation, and professional narrative.
Results snapshot (based on the 17 submitted applications)
The goal here is not marketing numbers. It is to show what happened in a small but meaningful live sample, with a practice that already knows the submission process.
Basis: internal time logs and platform activity across n=17 submissions during the beta period.
| Metric (n=17) | Typical professional submission approach (range) | Using UK Planning Gateway during beta (range) | What changed in practice |
|---|---|---|---|
| Admin time from “start submission” to “ready to submit” | 30 to 90 minutes | 15 to 20 minutes | Less re-entry of common details, clearer sequencing, fewer manual clean-up tasks |
| Time spent packaging and naming the document set | 10 to 15 minutes | 3 to 5 minutes | More consistent document handling and automatic file renaming |
| “Stop-start” interruptions caused by missing info or unclear requirements | 3 to 6 per submission | 1 to 3 per submission | Earlier prompts and checks reduced backtracking |
| Avoidable omissions identified before submit | Often found late (or after submission) | Usually caught earlier | Pre-submission checks flagged common gaps sooner |
| Internal consistency across team members working on the same application | Mixed | Stronger | Better structure for where information is entered and how it is reused |
*These are conservative ranges, because the platform was still being refined throughout the beta. The improvements reflect a system getting better through real usage, not a controlled demo environment.
What we learned (and what we changed because of it)
1) Council variation is real, and generic guidance is not enough
One of the clearest lessons was that “planning application guidance” becomes less useful the moment it becomes too general. Professionals need help that respects local reality and typical validation expectations.
Early in the project, we experimented with a general AI assistant approach. Lapworth’s feedback made the limitations obvious in a submission context:
- Generic answers sound plausible but do not reduce risk.
- Without local context, advice becomes vague, which pushes users back into manual checking.
- In a professional workflow, uncertainty is a cost. It forces rework, double-checking, and internal debate.
This pushed us toward a more practical standard: any guidance inside the workflow must be specific enough to be useful, and restrained enough to avoid false certainty.
2) AskArchi came from the need for grounded, council-aware support
AskArchi was shaped directly by the beta. The intention was never “more AI”. The intention was fewer avoidable admin steps, and fewer situations where professionals lose time searching for fragmented guidance.
AskArchi is trained on planning knowledge and local planning authority guidance across England (with expansion ongoing), so it can support professional tasks such as:
- answering questions inside the workflow in plain English
- helping draft decision-grade descriptions of development using structured prompts
- assisting with draft statements that teams can edit, including design, heritage and planning statements, where appropriate
- improving consistency when multiple people contribute to the same submission
The key is control. Outputs are drafts, not final answers, and professionals remain accountable for what is submitted.
3) The biggest productivity wins were consistency and reuse
The platform improvements that mattered most were the ones that reduce repeated effort:
- reuse of practice and site information across submissions
- fewer places to re-key information already held in documents
- clearer step structure that aligns with how practices assemble a submission pack
- improved document pack handling so drawings and supporting information stay consistent
- fewer “where does this go again?” decisions
Over 17 submissions, those small savings compound into a noticeable difference in workload and stress.
4) Working as partners changed the speed of improvement
This beta was structured around tight feedback loops. Lapworth’s team gave specific, experience-based feedback, and we turned that into practical product changes quickly.
That matters because most submission platforms improve slowly. In planning, slow improvement means teams keep building their own workarounds and never get time back.
Why Lapworth was a strong beta partner
Lapworth brought two things that made the findings more credible:
- High baseline competence They have an established submission process and deep experience across local authorities. That means improvements are not coming from “learning to submit”. They are coming from removing friction in an already professional workflow.
- Real variety, not a single test case Using the platform across five councils and multiple application types is a better test of reliability than repeating one application format 17 times.
To be clear, the value of UK Planning Gateway is not that it replaces professional judgement. The value is that it reduces repeat admin, supports consistency across teams, and helps professionals feel more confident that the submission pack is complete and well presented before they submit.
What this means for other practices
If you are submitting planning applications regularly, the cost is rarely the single submission. It is the cumulative admin: repeated data entry, repeated checking, repeated file handling, repeated drafting, and repeated internal coordination.
Based on the Lapworth beta, the takeaway is simple: the platform has been tested in live conditions by an experienced practice, and the product decisions were shaped by that reality, not by assumptions.
What happens next
Following the Lapworth beta, UK Planning Gateway opened early access beta testing more widely, and we are continuing to improve the platform based on structured feedback from professional users.
We are a small team, which means we can act quickly when something causes friction. That does not mean rushing. It means prioritising changes that reduce workload and improve reliability for real submission work.
Beta testing remains open for practices of all sizes, and the free OS maps offer is still running for eligible early users.
If you would like a walkthrough, we can show the workflow using real submission scenarios, explain what we improved during the Lapworth beta, and talk through how it would fit into your practice.
Contact: hello@planninggateway.co.uk
Enquiries / demo: Click here