Planning Consultants
If you're an independent planning consultant, you already know the drill.
A new instruction comes in. Householder extension, nothing complicated. You know exactly what needs to be said — the NPPF references, the design assessment, the amenity impact section, the conclusion. You've written versions of this document dozens of times.
And yet you still spend two to three hours drafting it from scratch.
That's the problem Planabl solves.
Planabl generates professional, policy-referenced planning documents in under 60 seconds. You fill in the site details, describe the proposal, paste in the relevant local plan policies, and hit generate. It produces a structured, NPPF-referenced first draft that downloads as an editable Word document — ready for you to review, refine, and submit under your own name.
It currently generates six document types:
Here's a real example. I generated a Planning Supporting Statement for a two-storey rear extension in Bristol, with Bristol City Council local plan policies included.
The output referenced Policy BCS21 (Quality Urban Design), Policy BCS22 (Conservation and the Historic Environment), Policy DM26 (Local Character and Place-making), and Policy DM27 (Layout and Form) — by name, in the assessment sections, assessed substantively rather than just mentioned in passing.
Section 5.1 read:
"Policy BCS21 requires that development contributes positively to the quality of the built environment. The proposed extension has been designed with attention to form, materials, and detailing to ensure it meets this objective. Policy DM26 requires development to respond positively to local character and place; the proposal satisfies this requirement by maintaining the prevailing building form and avoiding any undue visual impact on the street scene."
That's not a generic AI output. That's a policy-referenced assessment that a planning officer would expect to see.
The whole document — six sections, covering site description, planning policy framework, design and character, neighbouring amenity, garden space, and conclusion — came out at approximately 1,400 words. Ready to open in Word, edit, and submit.
A typical planning supporting statement takes an experienced consultant two to three hours to draft from scratch on a routine householder application. At a billing rate of £100/hour, that's £200–300 of time per document.
With Planabl, the first draft takes 60 seconds. Review, edit, and finalise takes 20–30 minutes. Total time: under an hour.
That's roughly two hours saved per application.
10 householder applications per month × 2 hours saved = 20 hours recovered — the equivalent of two and a half working days.
At £100/hour, that's £2,000 of recovered capacity every month.
A Planabl subscription costs £49/month.
The obvious question is: why not just use ChatGPT?
Three reasons.
First, Planabl is built specifically for UK planning. The prompts are engineered to produce documents that follow the structure planning officers expect — introduction, policy framework, assessment by topic, conclusion. It references the NPPF correctly, by paragraph number, for the relevant policy areas.
Second, local plan policy integration. You paste in the relevant local plan policies and Planabl incorporates them into the assessment sections alongside the NPPF. The output references your LPA's specific policies by name and number — not just national policy.
Third, the Style Profile. Subscribers can upload examples of their own previously written planning documents. Planabl analyses the writing style — sentence structure, tone, policy referencing approach, terminology — and applies it to every document it generates. The output sounds like you, not generic AI.
For larger applications, Planabl accepts PDF uploads of technical reports — transport statements, ecology reports, flood risk assessments, heritage reports. It summarises the key planning-relevant findings from each report and incorporates them into the relevant sections of the draft, with proper attribution.
Planabl is built for independent planning consultants and small practices who handle a regular volume of applications and want to spend less time on routine drafting and more time on the work that genuinely requires their expertise — client advice, negotiation with officers, complex applications, appeals strategy.
It's not a replacement for professional judgment. Every document Planabl generates is a first draft. You review it, you edit it, you submit it under your name. Your professional reputation stays intact. You just get the blank page filled in for you.
The first document is completely free with no account required. Fill in your site details and generate your first draft in 60 seconds.
Try Planabl free →If it's useful — and I think it will be — a subscription is £49/month. Team pricing is also available for practices with multiple planners.
Jude Walker — Founder, Planabl · planabl.co.uk