Lancaster council to join national AI project aimed at modernising town planning
Lancaster City Council has been selected as a partner in a nationally funded innovation project that will use AI to support future planning and housing delivery across the district.
The council is one of 11 selected for the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government's (MHCLG) PropTech Innovation Fund, and will see it work with Newark and Sherwood District Council and BNGAI by AiDASH, a nature intelligence platform, on the pilot project called BNGAI: AI-Powered Biodiversity Assessments for Strategic Housing and Economic Land Availability Assessments.
The project will explore how AI and digital technology can help local authorities assess biodiversity more efficiently and consistently to make better-informed decisions about where future development should take place while protecting important habitats and wildlife.
The project team will test innovative tools that use high-resolution satellite imagery for AI-powered habitat mapping, combined with existing biodiversity datasets and other information, that can help planning officers access and use the information quickly and consistently. It will reduce the time spent gathering and processing information.
Coun Paul Hart, Lancaster City Council’s member with responsibility for biodiversity, said: "We are delighted to be involved in this nationally recognised innovation programme. This project will help us explore how new technology can make planning processes more efficient while maintaining a strong focus on protecting and enhancing our natural environment.
“One of the biggest challenges in planning is gathering and analysing large amounts of information about potential development sites. By reducing the time spent on data collection, it enables officers to assess sites more efficiently and ensure the district can plan for the homes, jobs and infrastructure it needs in the future.
"So, this technology will support our officers rather than replace professional expertise, allowing specialist staff to spend more time applying their knowledge and judgement where it adds the greatest value."
The pilot will provide Lancaster City Council with access to satellite-driven habitat mapping and AI-enabled biodiversity datasets that can be integrated into existing planning systems.
The technology has already demonstrated its ability to significantly reduce the time and cost involved in gathering and processing biodiversity information, and the pilot will test how these benefits can be applied to strategic plan-making and enable officers to focus on detailed assessment and analysis.
While ecological expertise will remain essential, the tools will help streamline routine tasks and provide valuable strategic evidence about habitat distribution across the district.
As the lead local planning authority in the project, the council will play a key role in shaping how the technology is developed and tested, ensuring it meets the practical needs of local authorities and can potentially be adopted more widely across the planning sector in the future.
The project is part of the £2.4m PropTech Innovation Fund, the MHCLG’s flagship programme for digital projects designed to modernise England's planning system.
The eight-month pilot phase started in July, leading to presentation of completed pilots planned for early in 2027.