Question 1

How does ConsultAI manage personal data?

Accepted Answer

We do not need personal data to analyse your consultation responses. If you submit data containing personal or sensitive information, it is managed in accordance with GDPR requirements, using approved subprocessors and maintaining appropriate security and privacy standards.

Question 2

Does ConsultAI use my data for training its AI models?

Accepted Answer

No, ConsultAI does not use your data to train, fine-tune, or modify our AI models. Your data is solely used for your analysis, remains confidential, and is entirely separate from our model training processes.

Question 3

How accurate are the results?

Accepted Answer

We conduct rigorous benchmarking against manual and statutory equivalents, quality control checks, and consistent methodology to ensure high accuracy. Every theme and analytic generated is fully traceable back to the original comments, giving you confidence in the transparency and defensibility of the results.

ConsultAI was developed specifically to support statutory consultation processes, ensuring outputs can be audited, reviewed, and integrated into official planning workflows.
It’s not a "creative" AI; it's a specialist analysis tool designed to speed up public sector reporting while keeping human oversight at the centre.

Question 4

Is ConsultAI compliant with the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act?

Accepted Answer

Yes. ConsultAI does not require personal data for analysis. If personal or special category data is explicitly included in your data uploads, it won’t be shared outside of our secure UK infrastructure. If your data includes the occasional personal or special category data embedded within comments themselves, like references to specific addresses or people, the data it is handled according to GDPR protections and may be processed securely by subprocessors outside the EU, with full safeguards in place. Our subprocessors are listed transparently in our Terms and Conditions.

Question 5

Is ConsultAI compliant with statutory consultation regulations?

Accepted Answer

Yes, ConsultAI is designed in collaboration with planning officers to comply with statutory consultation regulations like Regulation 18/19. It helps local authorities structure, categorise, and summarise consultation feedback while allowing officers to review original comments and analytics to ensure legal compliance. Check our case studies for examples, including the first AI-generated Regulation 19 reports approved by a Planning Inspector.

Question 6

Will ConsultAI-generated reports hold up under legal scrutiny (e.g., Judicial Review)?

Accepted Answer

Judicial Review risk relates to how consultation responses are considered, not the tool used to process them. ConsultAI enhances transparency and traceability by providing a full audit trail that links every summary back to the original submission, helping reduce subjectivity and strengthen legal defensibility. However, in all cases, it remains your responsibility to review all comments and outputs, and to ensure that the final reporting accurately represents the consultation feedback received. ConsultAI supports the process, but does not replace the need for human oversight or assume responsibility for legal defence.

Question 7

Is ConsultAI compatible with our systems and file formats?

Accepted Answer

ConsultAI accepts standard formats such as spreadsheets (CSV, XLSX) and PDFs of documents. If your data is stored on public access systems, we can advise you on simple extraction and preparation steps to ensure smooth analysis. ConsultAI generates reports in CSV, XLSX, Word and PDF formats, which are downloadable at the click of a button. This interoperability means there’s no need to switch platforms or integrations with your portal provider, making it much easier to adopt and benefit from the time savings. If an integration is the only way, then please get in touch to discuss.

Question 8

Does ConsultAI work with handwritten or scanned documents?

Accepted Answer

ConsultAI can process machine-readable text from scanned PDFs, which is extremely accurate. It uses OCR to interpret handwritten documents, and their transcriptions will need to be reviewed and edited on the platform before analysis. We are happy to advise on the best approach based on your dataset to ensure quality results.

Question 9

What sets ConsultAI apart from general-purpose AI tools like Copilot or Adobe’s AI?

Accepted Answer

ConsultAI is purpose-built for analysing public consultation feedback, unlike general-purpose AI tools like Copilot or Adobe’s AI. It structures, categorises, and summarises real-world consultation responses with full transparency and traceability, rather than just generating content.

Question 10

Which types of consultations can benefit from ConsultAI?

Accepted Answer

ConsultAI is ideal for text-heavy public consultations with open-ended responses, such as planning applications, Local Plans, Supplementary Planning Documents, Transport Strategies, Parking Reviews, active travel schemes, and town centre regeneration schemes. It's perfect for consultations requiring analysis and summarisation of large volumes of free-text comments, especially when considering all comments and issues is crucial, and auditability is important. If you're unsure whether your project is a fit, we're happy to advise.

Question 11

We’re not a local authority. Can we use ConsultAI?

Accepted Answer

Yes. While ConsultAI was developed with local authorities and their unmanageable workloads in mind, it’s suitable for any organisation running public or stakeholder consultations — including developers, transport operators, community groups, planning consultants, housing associations, and more. If your consultation includes open-ended comments and you need structured, auditable reports, ConsultAI can help.

Save weeks of time on all your consultations

We're committed to making AI-powered consultation analysis clear, transparent, and easy to adopt. Here are answers to the most common questions about how ConsultAI works and how we protect your data, accuracy, and compliance.