How a document is drafted
Retrieve first. Draft second. Check before anyone reads it.
The order matters more than anything else on this page. A model that drafts first and looks for support afterwards will always find something that sounds right, which is precisely the failure mode planning cannot tolerate.
- Citation categories that must resolve
- 11Citation categories that must resolve
- Document types the engine drafts
- 14Document types the engine drafts
- Authorities whose requirements are held
- 378Authorities whose requirements are held
- Passes: draft, then critique against source
- 2Passes: draft, then critique against source
The four stages
What actually happens to your case.
- 01
Retrieval
Your authority's adopted plan, the national framework, the validation list, and the decisions made near your site.
- 02
Drafting
Written only from what was retrieved. The model is given the passages and told to work from them, never from memory.
- 03
Critique
A second pass reads the draft back against the source passages and marks anything the source does not support.
- 04
The gate
Every citation resolved against a live document. One that does not resolve stops the draft before a human sees it.
Then, and only then, a chartered planner reads it. Their time is spent on judgement rather than on checking whether a policy number is real.
The gate, specifically
Why a draft is allowed to fail.
An invented policy reference is not a typo. It is a statement to a public authority that a document says something it does not say, in a submission a chartered professional is about to put their name on.
So the gate is hard rather than advisory. If a reference in any of the 11 checked categories cannot be matched to a real passage in a real adopted document, the draft does not proceed. It is reported as failed, and it is looked at.
| What is checked | Resolved against |
|---|---|
| Local plan policy references | The adopted plan |
| National framework paragraphs | The current NPPF |
| Supplementary planning documents | The authority |
| Appeal decisions cited | The Planning Inspectorate |
| Statutory designations | The publishing body |
| Application references nearby | planning.data.gov.uk |
What is not automated
The parts a person does.
- Judgement
- Whether the argument is any good
- A draft can be accurate and still unpersuasive. Deciding whether it will actually convince an officer is a professional judgement and it is not automated.
- Revision
- Changing what needs changing
- The planner edits the document. They are not approving a machine's output unchanged, and their review time is recorded.
- The signature
- Personal, and named
- Signed in their own name with their membership number, under their own professional indemnity.
- Your approval
- The last word
- Nothing is submitted to the council until you have read the pack and approved it.
Read one and judge it yourself.
14 specimens are published in full. They come out of this pipeline, not out of a copywriter.