For architects and planning consultants
AI for the planning process.
PAI works like a planning expert on your team. It researches the site, tests your scheme against policy and precedent, drafts the documents and keeps watch on live applications. Add your Design and Access Statement, consultant reports and consultee letters, and it works from those too.
The concern is the glazed link, not the conversion. At 6.2 m it rises above the barn's eaves and is seen with Manor Farmhouse (Grade II) from the yard. Your heritage statement doesn't assess that view yet.
It counts for a lot: any harm is “a matter of considerable importance and weight” HE6(3), set against the public benefits. Case 6005610 allowed a modest glazed link, set back from a Grade II farmhouse's building line. Drop the link below the eaves and add the yard view.
What PAI does
Research the site, build the case, follow the application.
Know the site before you draw.
Give PAI an address and it brings together the planning history, nearby applications and appeals, designations such as conservation areas, listed buildings and flood zones where the council publishes them, and a link to the Local Plan. You start the design knowing how the council and inspectors have treated schemes like yours.
Test the scheme, then draft the case.
Ask how a proposal stands against the NPPF now in force and the appeal decisions that tested the same issues. PAI reads your own documents and relevant nearby applications as well. Then it drafts the planning statement, heritage statement, statement of case or rebuttal, ties each argument to the decision or policy it rests on, and marks the gaps for you to fill.
Hear when something changes.
Watch the applications that matter to a job, your own or a neighbour’s. PAI keeps checking the council’s records and shows you when the status moves, new documents appear or a decision is issued. Then you can ask it what changed and how to respond.
Your project
PAI works from what your team already has.
Each job gets a project. Add the Design and Access Statement, consultant reports, the refusal notice and letters from consultees. PAI reads them and uses them when it answers, alongside council records, appeal decisions and planning policy.
Your documents, read in full
Ask what the highways officer wants addressed, and PAI checks their response against your transport note and Design and Access Statement.
Your team in the same project
Invite colleagues and they see the same files and watched applications. Chats stay private until you share them with the project.
Work that carries forward
The research from the appraisal is still there when you draft the statement, and still there when the council comes back with a question.
Send it to a client
Share a chat as a read-only link. Your client can open it without signing in.
Three strong precedents: Case 3339561, Case 3248988 and Case 3332932. All allowed under the Green Belt exception for re-using buildings of permanent and substantial construction, as not inappropriate development.
Drafted. See the panel on the right. I've marked site-specific details as fill-in fields for you to complete.
1. The Site
The appeal site comprises a single-storey agricultural building at Site Address within the Metropolitan Green Belt.
2. Grounds of Appeal
The application was refused on Refusal Date on the grounds that the proposal would constitute inappropriate development. The Appellant submits that it is not inappropriate: it re-uses a building of permanent and substantial construction and preserves openness, consistent with Case 3339561 and Case 3248988.
Drafting
From a rough brief to a grounded draft, in one conversation.
Drop in your site plans, a refusal notice, or whatever background you have. Ask PAI what the precedents say, talk through the approach, then say “draft me a planning statement” and it will, in the side panel. Each argument rests on the policy and appeal decisions it cites, and site-specific details are marked as fill-in fields for you to complete.
Drafts are versioned. Revise as you go. You keep the pen.
What it'll draft for you
- Planning statement
- Statement of case
- Heritage impact assessment
- Proof of evidence
- Pre-application statement
- Design and access statement
- Rebuttal
- Replies to officers and consultees
- Memos, comparison tables, and anything else planning-related
The evidence base
Built on the public record.
PAI draws on what the Planning Inspectorate, councils and government publish, and keeps it current. New appeal decisions and changes to applications are picked up as they appear, so this month's decisions are already part of the evidence.
Trust
Open the sources behind the answer.
A good consultant tells you what they're reasoning from. PAI does the same. It cites the appeal decisions, policy paragraphs and council documents it relies on, and a [Case …] citation opens the decision at the paragraph it used. It works from published records and your own files, not the open web.
AI can still get things wrong, so PAI is built to be checked. You can read the source yourself before the work goes to a client, a council or an inspector.
The officer calls it “less than substantial harm”, wording the August 2026 Framework no longer uses. Any harm still carries great weight, and is “weighed against any public benefits resulting from the proposal” HE6(4).
Case 6005610 struck that balance for a modest, set-back glazed link joining a Grade II farmhouse to an outbuilding: “a very low degree of harm”, outweighed by public benefits including the repair and reuse of the vacant outbuilding.
Proposals affecting designated heritage assets
Word for word in the August 2026 Framework.
Where a development proposal would harm the significance of a designated heritage asset the effect on the asset and its significance should be weighed against any public benefits resulting from the proposal. Important public benefits can include securing the long-term reuse of a vacant or underused listed building, and enabling energy efficiency and low carbon heating measures to be employed.
Roadmap
Coming next.
Email updates
An email when a watched application changes or a relevant new appeal decision is published, so you hear about it without opening PAI.
Conditions checklist
PAI reads the conditions on a decision notice, sets out what each one needs and when, and keeps track as you discharge them.
Pricing
Start free. Upgrade when the work picks up.
No card needed. Every plan includes all of PAI: site research, appeal and policy research, drafting, project files and application tracking. Plans differ mainly in how much you can use each month.
Professional
£100/month
2.5× the usage of Starter
For regular casework across a few live jobs
Start freeScale
£200/month
6× the usage of Starter
For a practice running several live jobs at once
Start freeUpgrades begin a fresh month straight away. Credit packs from £10 top up any paid plan. The Free allowance may change while we're in early access.
Free plan
Start free. No card, no time limit.
Set up a project for a job you're working on now. Add the site and your documents, ask PAI about it, and see what it finds. Free gives you a monthly allowance that refreshes by itself. Upgrade when the work picks up.
Not ready yet? Leave your email and we'll keep you posted.
Who's behind PAI
After 15 years navigating 100+ local planning authorities, Studio Bark, environmental architects crafting radical, zero-carbon design, finally built the planning expert they always wished they had. PAI is their project, in collaboration with David Sinclair, a product builder and engineer working on tools for the built environment. It began as a way to make sense of Inspectorate decisions. Now we use it across our own planning work, from the first look at a site to the appeal.