Using an AI draft for pre-application submissions

A pre-application submission works best as four pages and six questions, and an AI draft is a reasonable way to produce the four pages as long as you supply the site facts yourself. What a case officer needs at this stage is not a policy appraisal. It is enough description to understand the proposal, an honest list of the constraints, and specific questions that can be answered yes, no or not as drawn. The fee is charged under the authority's published bands for a discretionary service, so you are buying officer time and the aim is to spend it on your questions rather than on reading.

Pre-application advice is discretionary. Councils charge for it under their general power to charge for discretionary services, the bands are published, and the advice does not bind the authority or the committee.

What the request should contain

Keep it to a short document and a small drawing set. In order of how much use each part is to the officer:

1. A site location plan at a recognisable scale with the application boundary edged red, and any other land in the applicant's control edged blue.
2. A description of the proposal in one paragraph, written as it would appear on the application form.
3. A constraints list with the source of each entry.
4. Existing and proposed plans and elevations, dimensioned, at a scale the officer can measure.
5. Your specific questions, numbered.
6. The planning history, with references.

That is the whole document. An AI-assisted draft handles the description, the constraints narrative and the policy framing competently, because those are structural tasks. It cannot supply the site facts, and a draft that reaches an officer with placeholder flags still in it reads worse than three sentences you wrote yourself.

Questions that get useful answers

The difference between a useful pre-app response and a generic one is almost entirely in the questions. Compare these two.

"Would the council support a four-bedroom dwelling on this plot?" invites a paragraph about the development plan and a reminder that no view can be given without a full application.

"The plot is 14 metres wide. Is a 7.5 metre wide dwelling set 2 metres from the southern boundary acceptable in principle, or does the spacing policy in the local plan require more?" invites an answer.

Write questions that contain the number, the dimension or the alternative. Six is about the limit before the response becomes a summary. Good ones tend to take one of these shapes:

• Is principle X acceptable, and if not, which policy is the obstacle.
• Of options A and B, which raises fewer objections.
• Which supporting documents will the validation list require for this proposal.
• Is a condition acceptable in place of a survey before work starts.
• Will this be determined under delegated powers or at committee.

The validation question is the one self-builders most often forget, and it is the one with the clearest financial value. An officer confirming in writing that a scheme needs a Preliminary Ecological Appraisal but not a full protected species survey has saved more than the pre-app fee. The reasons applications fail validation are set out in our note on why planning applications are returned as invalid.

Why a short document beats a long one

Officers triage. A 30-page policy appraisal submitted with a pre-application request gets skimmed, and the reply addresses the proposal rather than the argument. A four-page document with numbered questions gets read, and the reply answers the questions.

There is a second reason. Anything you assert at pre-application stage becomes the baseline the officer measures the eventual application against. Overstate the site's constraints and you have conceded them. Describe a scheme you then change materially and the advice no longer applies, and you have paid for an answer to a question you are not asking any more.

So write less, and write it to be true at submission rather than true today.

Constraints to set out up front

Officers check these anyway, and setting them out signals that the application will arrive validated. For each, give the source and the date you checked it.

PlanScope checks a site against Environment Agency flood data, Historic England listed buildings and conservation areas, and Natural England protected site layers automatically from a postcode, which is a reasonable starting point for the constraints table. It is a starting point rather than a search. Tree Preservation Orders, Article 4 directions and local designations sit on the authority's own systems, and you need to look them up and say so.

Where a constraint is uncertain, say that rather than guessing. "The site may lie within the Article 4 area, confirmation requested" is a legitimate line in a pre-app document and invites the officer to settle it for you.

Where an AI draft helps, and where it does not

An AI-assisted draft produces structure quickly and cites national policy and local plan text in the right places. It flags missing facts with a marker rather than inventing them, which is the behaviour you want in a document that will be read by the officer who later determines the application.

What it cannot do is look at the site. The judgements that decide a householder or small-site pre-app are about what the place feels like: whether a gap in a street is a genuine gap or a garden that reads as part of the setting of the house next door, whether the bank at the back of the plot is a bank or a retaining structure, whether the neighbour's window is a bedroom or a landing. Our piece on where site judgement cannot be drafted in a design statement covers the same ground for the main application.

Use the draft for the Planning Statement skeleton, then do three things to it. Delete every section that does not bear on your questions. Replace every flagged placeholder with a measured fact or a stated uncertainty. And read it once as the case officer, asking what it would be like to receive.

For specialist technical reports, qualified professional input may be required, and where the pre-app response asks for ecology, acoustics or drainage work, that is a professional's job. The professional directory is the route to a reviewer who can sign off a draft.

Recording the reply and carrying it into the application

Pre-application responses have a habit of becoming irrelevant. Three habits stop that.

Write the response into a table at the point you receive it: question, officer's answer, what it changes in the scheme, and the drawing or document that now reflects it. Date the table and keep it as part of the submission pack.

Quote the advice in the application's covering letter, accurately, including the parts that went against you. An officer who reads a selective account of their own advice becomes less helpful, and the file is theirs.

Then resubmit the advice as context when the application goes in, with the case reference. Officers change, caseloads move, and an application that arrives with the pre-app reference and a short note on what changed in response is quicker to assess. Nothing in pre-application advice binds the authority, but the record of it is the most useful thing you own when a different officer reaches a different view.

Pre-application fees vary by authority and by scheme size, and they are published. Budget them alongside the drafting cost, which PlanScope pricing sets out as one free report, £50 per report, or £150 per month for unlimited reports on the Professional tier.

This is general guidance, not legal advice. Pre-application advice does not bind the local planning authority or its committee, and a Lawful Development Certificate is the only formal way to confirm that works are lawful. Check the position with your local planning authority or a qualified professional before relying on it.

PlanScope provides AI-assisted draft reports for planning applications. Reports should be reviewed before submission. We do not guarantee planning approval.