Planning AI

Try Before You Buy

About NDX

NDX (National Digital Exchange) is a government platform that helps public sector organisations discover, evaluate, and adopt digital solutions.

Overview

Learning Artifact: This is a pre-deployed demonstration environment for learning and exploration, not a production-ready product. Use it to understand how AWS AI services can assist with planning application processing.

Deployed and ready - no setup required. When you request this sandbox, you’ll receive access to a fully configured planning document analysis system that’s already running and ready to explore.

This Planning AI scenario demonstrates how local authorities can use AWS AI services to automatically extract information, summarise content, and identify key issues from planning applications and supporting documents.

What you’ll explore

This sandbox includes a working implementation using:

Amazon Textract - Extract text and structured data from planning documents (PDFs, images, scanned forms)
Amazon Comprehend - Understand document content and identify key entities and topics
Amazon Bedrock - Generate summaries and answer questions about planning applications
AWS Lambda - Serverless compute for orchestrating the analysis workflow
Amazon S3 - Storage for planning documents and analysis results

In plain English: You’ll explore an AI that reads and summarises planning applications - extracting key details like property descriptions, proposed changes, and potential issues to help planning officers process applications faster.

Learn More

Before requesting your sandbox, explore the scenario documentation to understand what’s deployed and how to interact with it:

View Planning AI scenario details

Getting started

Select “Try this now for 24 hours” above
Accept the Acceptable Use Policy
Receive AWS SSO credentials via email
Access your sandbox environment through AWS Console
Follow the scenario guide to upload sample planning documents and see analysis results

Why this matters for local government

AI-assisted planning analysis can:

Speed up initial review by extracting key information automatically
Improve consistency in how applications are summarised
Help prioritise workload by identifying applications needing urgent attention
Support officers with quick access to document insights during consultation

This scenario lets you evaluate whether AI could assist your planning department’s processes.

Constraints

Budget limit: $50 maximum spend (sufficient for extensive exploration)
Duration: 24 hours from activation
Purpose: Evaluation only (non-production use)
No cost to you - the budget is provided by NDX:Try

Important Notes

Resource Lifecycle Warning: All resources in your sandbox will be automatically deleted when your session time expires OR when the budget limit is reached (whichever comes first). Do not store important data in this environment.

Before your session ends

Export any configurations or code snippets you want to keep
Take screenshots of analysis outputs
Document any insights about accuracy and limitations
Download any generated summaries

How this was built

This scenario is built with open source infrastructure as code. You can view the CloudFormation template, understand how it works, and adapt it for your own needs.

View the source code on GitHub (opens in new tab)

Build your own

After exploring this pre-deployed scenario, use the Empty Sandbox to build your own solution from scratch. The Empty Sandbox gives you a clean AWS environment where you can experiment freely.

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Troubleshooting

Try button not working? Make sure you’re signed in to NDX
Did not receive credentials? Check your spam folder, or wait a few minutes
Cannot access the scenario? Ensure you’re using the correct AWS region (us-east-1)
Budget exhausted early? Some services have higher costs - contact support if unexpected

Support

For technical issues during your sandbox session, contact the NDX team at ndx@dsit.gov.uk.