Milton Keynes Council slashes planning wait times by a fifth using AI

Planning decisions in Milton Keynes City Council are being made significantly faster after the council introduced AI to remove one of the biggest bottlenecks in the planning process - application validation - cutting overall decision times by nearly a fifth (18%).

The move comes as councils across the country face mounting pressure to accelerate housebuilding, with the government targeting 1.5 million new homes and planning delays increasingly acting as a constraint on delivery.

Milton Keynes, one of the UK’s fastest-growing cities, processes more than 1,700 applications each year and is expected to deliver around 60,000 new homes by 2050. Recently identified as a potential location for a new town, the pressure to process applications quickly while maintaining quality has intensified.

Until recently, much of that work relied on manual checks - with planning officers reviewing lengthy documents line by line, verifying plans, checking fees and ensuring applications met strict national and local requirements. This process created a bottleneck at the very start of the process, slowing down decisions as volumes increased.

To tackle this, the council partnered with Valon to introduce AI-assisted validation that automatically checks applications against planning requirements, flags issues, and prepares cases for officer review - allowing officers to move through applications far more quickly.

The impact has been immediate. Applications are now moving from receipt to validation around 8 days faster, while overall decision times have dropped by 18% compared to non-AI cases. Major application checks have been cut from roughly 65 minutes to just 10, and validation turnaround has halved from around 15.8 days to 7.7 days.

Harrison, CEO of Valon, said:
“Milton Keynes shows what’s possible when councils are able to move through applications faster and with greater confidence.

“By improving how the process works day to day, decisions can be made more quickly without changing policy or adding resource.

“We’re proud to have supported the council in freeing up planners from manual tasks at the start of the process, so they can focus on what matters most - making decisions, applying policy and shaping development. If we’re serious about delivering new homes, this is the kind of practical progress that helps turn ambition into reality.”

Changes come amid a steady stream of new planning applications across Milton Keynes, with schemes for up to 140 homes among the latest proposals landing on the council’s desk.

As pressure mounts to accelerate housing delivery, the Milton Keynes approach provides a clear example of how councils can speed up decisions today - without waiting for planning reform or increasing headcount.