Have you used AI to formulate your application? The Council now wants to know!
When one of my colleagues started talking about “Claude” I did, rather innocently ask, “who is this Claude and who does he work for?”. And since then, I have been banging on about the use of AI… Some even think I am having an affair with Claude!
My argument is very simple, if you rely on AI and expect humans to read it, then you might as well give it to another AI to read it. And then it beggars the question, if AI writes it, and then AI reads it, what is the bloody point? Call me old fashioned, but surely AI would enjoy it more to play Pac-Man than to write and read generic rubbish about planning applications.
It also touches on the fact that there is far too much bloody rubbish required as part of the planning applications. Did William the Conqueror commission flood zone report and a drainage strategy when he built the Tower of London? No, he used common sense and 950 years later, it still there and doing fine. (And I know how he consulted with the neighbours… believe me, I have often thought Harold the NIMBY could do with an arrow in the eye).
But back to AI. We have received a marvellous e-mail from a planning department from a lovely District Council has requested us to complete an AI declaration. Whilst this is relatively new to us, it appears that other local authorities are beginning to adopt a similar approach, so it is something we will need to be mindful of on future projects.
The form requires us to confirm whether AI has been used to create, assist with, or materially alter any part of the planning submission.
If you have used AI in the preparation of any aspect of your work on this project, please could you reply directly to me and confirm:
Which supporting document(s) AI was used in; and
Whether it was used in any plans, drawings, photographs, or datasets.
Now, we have also seen applicants recently utilising AI to write consultation material. And I have seen it spectacularly backfire. Yes, AI might be cheaper, but AI, with the best will in the world, deals with cold hard facts. If the surrounding area was entirely populated with AI bots, then I am 100% convinced that they would have supported their AI comrade in arms, but unfortunately, the neighbours are humans. The AI message, unsurprisingly, was dealing with facts and not emotions and its main achievement was to successfully wind them up to the level where the neighbours then (rather ironically) utilised AI to draft some 2,000 objections (well, it is either that or the local area has the highest concentration of NIMBY planning consultants who can rattle off strings of policies).
But back to AI. We can’t get away from it, it is here to stay but let’s use it to our advantage and preserve a bit of our unique humanity.
Until next week,
Henry