Description
AI and data-led planning: what is working and where
Speaker Details
Harry Quartermain MRTPI – University of the Built Environment Associate Lecturer
Harry Quartermain is a Chartered Town Planner with broad experience in the private sector, including urban regeneration schemes, strategic site promotion, Environmental Impact Assessment, and planning policy drafting. He is an Associate Lecturer at the University of the Built Environment, where he leads modules on AI and Data in the Built Environment. Harry is also LandTech’s Head of Research and advises the market-leading planning technology company on how to apply their unique data in innovative ways. For 2026, Harry is Chair of the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) in the South West of England.
Content
Artificial intelligence (AI) is starting to reshape how planning systems work around the world. Councils are using it to turn decades of paper records into data, to check proposals against policy and to help officers reach decisions faster. Approaches differ sharply between countries, and so do the results.
This one-hour virtual CPD session explains, in plain terms, what AI actually does in planning, using a simple “automation spectrum” ranging from digitising records to fully automated decisions. It looks closely at England’s national programme, including the Extract tool and the Augmented Planning Decisions trials. It then compares experience from around the world.
You will leave with a practical set of questions to ask of any planning AI tool, and at least one lesson you can apply in the system you know best.
When: 26 November 2026
Timings (GMT)
11:30 Welcome and audience poll
11:35 Part 1 – Foundation: What AI does in planning, and why data comes first
11:42 Part 2 – The UK in focus: England national planning data and AI tools
11:52 Part 3 – Around the world: international case studies
12:05 Part 4 – Making it work: governance, accountability and what transfers between systems
12:15 Questions and discussion
12:25 Closing remarks
Location : delivered online
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CPD Certificate
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