From 18 months to 4 weeks: How Winchester completed their Regulation 19 consultation with AI

Impact at a glance

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• 144 structured consultation reports delivered

• 5,000 comments analysed from ~3,000 representors

• 4 weeks end-to-end, vs. what officers would have taken 18 months manually

 

The result: Winchester's Local Plan was submitted to the Planning Inspectorate with ConsultAI outputs forming part of the evidence base - and was subsequently found sound.

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The Challenge: a pressing deadline and many comments

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Winchester City Council needed to submit its new Local Plan ahead of imminent changes to the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF). Missing the window could have caused major delays or required reworking the entire plan. There was no room for the kind of extended manual analysis that a consultation of this scale would normally require.

The scale of the task was daunting. As part of the Regulation 19 consultation, the council received nearly 5,000 comments across more than 140 policies. Responses arrived through their digital engagement platform, emails, and handwritten letters. The council needed to quickly collate all representations and prepare two key outputs:

 

• A summary of responses per policy and an overall summary for the Regulation 22 Statement

• A searchable database of all representations

 

As pioneers in adopting AI for consultation analysis, there was no precedent for whether AI-generated outputs would be accepted by the Inspector and hold through Examination - and both the public and politicians had concerns about the use of AI in the planning process. Only later in 2024 did PINS publish guidance on the use of AI, but Winchester were able to use ConsultAI's privacy policy to mitigate concerns.

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The Solution: How ConsultAI handled the analysis
 

Where most AI tools assist officers with discrete tasks like tagging or summarising individual responses, ConsultAI automates the full analysis pipeline end-to-end - from raw data through to structured, submission-ready reports.

Generating 144 structured reports

After cleansing and structuring the dataset, ConsultAI processed nearly 5,000 comments across more than 140 policies. Each report delivered a clear overview of the key themes and positions taken by respondents, a detailed thematic breakdown of the issues raised, and traceability back to individual representations with an underlying dataset. Using AI also meant there was a consistent methodology, structure, and quality across every report. The summaries were designed to be reviewed and edited by officers - giving the team a reliable, structured starting point.

Supporting the Regulation 22 Statement

The summaries generated by ConsultAI formed the basis of Part 2 of the council's Regulation 22 Statement - the formal document submitted alongside the Local Plan to demonstrate how consultation responses were considered. This meant ConsultAI outputs were not just internal tools; they became part of the statutory submission reviewed by the Planning Inspectorate. A clear declaration of the use of AI was also included in the report - now in line with subsequent guidance from the Planning Inspectorate.

A searchable database of representations

The Future Fox also prepared the searchable database alongside the summaries, ensuring that individual points of representation were consistently numbered across both - as required by the Local Plan Guidance for Programme Officers. A publicly available version was published online.

From consultation close to submission in four weeks

Under normal circumstances, this work would have consumed months of officer time. With ConsultAI, the data was prepared and reports were created in a week. Officers then reviewed the reports and finalised their Reg 22 report in a further three weeks. The total end-to-end process was compressed to just four weeks, enabling the team to move directly to submission.

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“We found with our Reg 19 consultation response analysis, what took 8 officers 18 months, took AI a matter of weeks"

 

- Bethany Edwards, Senior Planning Officer, Winchester City Council

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The result: submitted, inspected and found Sound

 

Well ahead of the NPPF changes, Winchester's Local Plan was submitted to the Planning Inspectorate with ConsultAI-generated reports forming part of the evidence base. The Inspector raised some queries regarding the format of the documents, but these were promptly addressed and the summaries and reports were then accepted in full. The Plan was subsequently found sound at Examination, with adoption expected by April 2026.

Winchester is the first council in the country where AI-analysed consultation outputs have been tested and accepted under the formal examination process. For other councils weighing whether to adopt AI-assisted analysis, this is no longer a question of principle - it is a matter of precedent. The standard has been met, the scrutiny has been passed, and the path is now open.

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“"The team found this process extremely helpful in meeting an extremely demanding timescale for the project... this was a very positive experience for the team."

 

- Adrian Fox, Principal Planning Officer, Winchester City Council

 

Ready to find out what ConsultAI do for your team?
 

📩 Schedule your demo today: hello@thefuturefox.com
 

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