Ask Wren

Answers with the source shown.

Ask a planning question about a real site and get an answer drawn from the adopted local plan, the national framework and the decisions your council has already made, with the passage it read shown next to what it says.

Ask a question What a question costs

Questions with no account at all: 3Questions with no account at all
Credits when you sign up: 25Credits when you sign up
Credits per question after that: 1Credits per question after that
Authorities whose plans we hold: 378Authorities whose plans we hold

Why it shows its working

An answer you cannot check is an opinion.

A language model asked about planning policy from memory will produce a fluent, confident, and frequently invented answer. That is worse than useless when the question is whether you can build something.

So Ask Wren does not answer from memory. It retrieves the passage first, answers only from what it retrieved, and shows you the passage. If it cannot find a source, it says it cannot find one rather than filling the gap.

Where AI is used, and where it is not

The Ask Wren panel: a planning question, the answer, and the policy passage retrieved to support it. — **A real answer.** The passage retrieved is shown beside what the model concluded from it.

What it is good at

Questions with a documented answer.

It is a research tool over a corpus, not an oracle. The questions it answers well are the ones a planning consultant would answer by looking something up.

Policy: What does my plan actually say; The adopted local plan for your authority, quoted, with the policy number and the page it came from.
Precedent: What has this council decided before; Applications determined nearby, with outcomes and the officer's stated reasons.
Process: Which route does this need; Permitted development, prior approval, full application or certificate, and what each involves.
Requirements: What will they ask me for; That authority's own validation list, which is where most refusals on procedure begin.

Asked and answered

What people want to know first.

Do I need an account?

No. You get 3 questions with no account at all. Signing up adds 25 credits, and none of them expire.

Is it giving me legal advice?

No, and it says so. It is a research tool over public documents. Advice you can rely on comes from the chartered planner who signs your application, in their own name and under their indemnity.

What if it does not know?

It says so. The retrieval gate means an answer with no supporting passage is not produced at all, which is deliberately less impressive and considerably more useful.

Does it cover my council?

All 378 live UK authorities have a profile. Adopted plan coverage is published in full, including where it is thin.

Ask it something about a real site.

3 questions, no account, no card. If the answer is not useful you have lost nothing.

Ask a question What it reads from