Planning Portal‘s Planning Portal SmartApply system represents the platform’s most substantive overhaul in years, developed in direct response to feedback from practices spending disproportionate hours on document classification, file errors and application readiness checks rather than on design work.
The context is not incidental. Planning reform is accelerating, sustainability obligations are intensifying, and fixed-fee contracts mean that every hour consumed by avoidable administrative friction comes directly off practice margins. The pressures are operational and financial simultaneously, and digital infrastructure has struggled to keep pace.
What the Planning Portal SmartApply system delivers
For high-volume practices, the new capabilities are oriented around reducing repetition at the submission stage. Bulk upload and classification, a live document checklist and built-in Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) functionality remove steps that professionals described as particularly burdensome on larger schemes. In workshops conducted as part of Planning Portal’s research, those features alone were said to be capable of saving several hours on a single complex application.
The Multiple Projects function allows practices to group applications by site or client, move them in bulk and share them across teams, addressing a workflow gap that has long created friction on multi-phase developments. For buildings outside the higher-risk category, Planning and Building Control now sit on a single platform, so documentation and information persist through the project’s life rather than being recreated at each gateway.
Completeness and readiness checks, due from late October, are positioned as the most anticipated addition: 49% of professionals surveyed said this would be the most valuable tool in the platform. Identifying missing information before submission reduces the risk of validation failure and the delays that follow.
Building Safety Levy integration and the October 2026 deadline
From 1 October, Full Plans applications on the platform will include new Building Safety Levy questions. The timing is directly tied to the levy’s statutory commencement: according to GOV.UK guidance, the Building Safety Levy comes into effect on 1 October 2026, applying to residential developments requiring building control approval in England.
Not every project will be caught. The Federation of Master Builders confirms that developments of fewer than 10 new homes are exempt from the levy, a threshold that will shape how practices scope and advise clients on smaller residential schemes. For practices working across both volume housebuilding and smaller residential projects, understanding where the levy bites and where it does not will be an immediate compliance consideration embedded in the application process.
Integrating those questions directly into Full Plans submissions on the platform reflects the broader ambition behind the SmartApply system: that structured data flows from the practice to the local authority without manual reformatting. The JSON API investment underpinning the platform is intended to ensure submissions reach local authority systems in the structured form those systems expect, reducing the translation burden at validation.
AI guardrails and the limits of automation
Planning Portal is explicit that artificial intelligence within the platform operates within defined rules, drawing on national policy, authoritative guidance and two decades of platform data. Answers generated through the Ask Navi guidance tool are regularly reviewed by people, with safeguards designed to keep outputs grounded in those trusted sources. Project description refinement is already available, and the longer-term roadmap includes helping applicants build applications from their supporting attachments.
The position on professional judgement is unambiguous: AI is not positioned as a substitute for it. New capabilities are developed and tested with architects, consultants and local authorities before release, and decisions about placemaking remain with the design team. That framing matters for practices assessing where automation genuinely reduces cognitive load and where it risks introducing error or over-reliance.
For sustainability consultants and architects working toward RIBA Sustainable Outcomes or LETI targets, the golden thread argument is relevant here: reliable, accessible information that persists throughout a project’s life is a precondition for robust carbon reporting and lifecycle documentation, not merely a planning convenience. A more connected, data-led process builds the foundation that downstream performance verification increasingly requires.
The Building Safety Levy questions embedded in Full Plans applications from 1 October 2026 give practices a concrete deadline around which to review their submission workflows on the platform before the levy’s commencement date arrives.
