The number of planning applications for new homes in England is at its highest level for four years, new data shared with BBC Verify suggests. Applications for 335,000 homes outside London were lodged in 2025, up by 60% on 2024, according to Planning Portal, the service people use to request permission. But there are warnings that more needs to be done to meet Labour's target of building 1.5 million homes by 2029, as separate government data released on Thursday suggests there has been a decrease in house building. The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government said it had overhauled the planning system and removed long-standing barriers that have held back housebuilding. The increase in planning applications for new homes in England follows controversial reforms introduced by Labour, which allow development on some lower-quality green belt land, known as grey belt .

The home secretary has announced a blueprint for reforming what she called the broken policing model in England and Wales. Shabana Mahmood confirmed the shake-up will create a new National Police Service (NPS) to fight the most complex cross-border crime and could also see the number of local forces in England and Wales cut by around two-thirds. She told the House of Commons she also intends to make better use of technology - including the largest-ever rollout of facial recognition. This government's reforms will ensure we have the right policing in the right place, Mahmood said. I set out reforms that are long overdue and define a new model for policing in this country, with local policing that protects our communities and national policing that protects us all.

About 40% of 13-to 17-year-olds in England and Wales affected by youth violence are turning to AI chatbots for mental health support. About 40% of 13-to 17-year-olds in England and Wales affected by youth violence are turning to AI chatbots for mental health support. 'I feel it's a friend': quarter of teenagers turn to AI chatbots for mental health support It was after one friend was shot and another stabbed, both fatally, that Shan asked ChatGPT for help. She had tried conventional mental health services but "chat", as she came to know her AI "friend", felt safer, less intimidating and, crucially, more available when it came to handling the trauma from the deaths of her young friends. As she started consulting the AI model, the Tottenham teenager joined about 40% of 13-to 17-year-olds in England and Wales affected by youth violence who are turning to AI chatbots for mental health support, according to research among more than 11,000 young people.

All civil servants in England and Wales will get practical training in how to use artificial intelligence to speed up their work from this autumn, the Guardian has learned. More than 400,000 civil servants will be informed of the training on Monday afternoon, which is part of a drive by the chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, Pat McFadden, to overhaul the civil service and improve its productivity. At the same time, the size of the civil service is being reduced by tens of thousands of roles through voluntary redundancy and not replacing leavers. The government said officials would be tasked with figuring how they could use AI technology to streamline their own work wherever possible. Officials are already piloting a package of AI tools called Humphrey – named after the senior civil servant Sir Humphrey Appleby from the 1980s TV sitcom Yes, Minister.

The future is coming at Croydon fast. It might not look like Britain's cutting edge but North End, a pedestrianised high street lined with the usual mix of pawn shops, fast-food outlets and branded clothing stores, is expected to be one of two roads to host the UK's first fixed facial recognition cameras. Digital photographs of passersby will be silently taken and processed to extract the measurements of facial features, known as biometric data. They will be immediately compared by artificial intelligence to images on a watchlist. Alerts can lead to arrests.

Police believe live facial recognition cameras may become "commonplace" in England and Wales, according to internal documents, with the number of faces scanned having doubled to nearly 5m in the last year. A joint investigation by the Guardian and Liberty Investigates highlights the speed at which the technology is becoming a staple of British policing. Major funding is being allocated and hardware bought, while the British state is also looking to enable police forces to more easily access the full spread of its image stores, including passport and immigration databases, for retrospective facial recognition searches. Live facial recognition involves the matching of faces caught on surveillance camera footage against a police watchlist in real time, in what campaigners liken to the continual finger printing of members of the public as they go about their daily lives. Retrospective facial recognition software is used by the police to match images on databases with those caught on CCTV and other systems.

Drones have become a "threat to national security", the prisons watchdog has said, after a surge in the amount of weapons and drugs flown into high-security jails. Charlie Taylor, the chief inspector of prisons, called for urgent action from Whitehall and the police after inquiries found that terrorism suspects and criminal gangs could escape or attack guards because safety had been "seriously compromised". His demands follow inspections at two category A prisons holding some of England and Wales's most dangerous inmates. HMP Manchester and HMP Long Lartin in Worcestershire had thriving illicit economies selling drugs, mobile phones and weapons, and basic anti-drone security measures such as protective netting and CCTV had been allowed to fall into disrepair, inspectors found. In a report released on Tuesday, Taylor said the police and prison service had "in effect ceded the airspace above two high-security prisons to organised crime gangs" despite knowing they were holding "extremely dangerous prisoners".

Judges in England and Wales will have approval for "careful use" of artificial intelligence (AI) to help produce rulings, but experts remain divided over how extensively judges or the wider law profession should seek to use the technology. "I would say AI is probably appropriate to cast a wide net to gather as much information as possible," William A. Jacobson, a Cornell University Law professor and founder of the Equal Protection Project, told Fox News Digital. "That might inform your decision, but I don't think it is at a place now – and I don't know if it ever will be – that it can actually do the sorting … and make the sort of decisions and determinations that you need to make, whether it's as a judge or a lawyer," Jacobson said. The Courts and Tribunals Judiciary, the body of various judges, magistrates, tribunal members and coroners in England and Wales, decided that judges may use AI to write opinions, and only opinions, with no leeway to use the technology for research or legal analyses due to the potential for AI to fabricate information and provide misleading, inaccurate and biased information. Caution over AI's use in the legal field partially stems from a few high-profile blunders that resulted from lawyers experimenting with the tech, which produced court filings that included references to fictional cases, known as "hallucinations."

England's 1,000-year-old legal system -- still steeped in traditions that include wearing wigs and robes -- has taken a cautious step into the future by giving judges permission to use artificial intelligence to help produce rulings. The Courts and Tribunals Judiciary last month said AI could help write opinions but stressed it shouldn't be used for research or legal analyses because the technology can fabricate information and provide misleading, inaccurate and biased information. "Judges do not need to shun the careful use of AI," said Master of the Rolls Geoffrey Vos, the second-highest ranking judge in England and Wales. "But they must ensure that they protect confidence and take full personal responsibility for everything they produce." At a time when scholars and legal experts are pondering a future when AI could replace lawyers, help select jurors or even decide cases, the approach spelled out Dec. 11 by the judiciary is restrained. But for a profession slow to embrace technological change, it's a proactive step as government and industry -- and society in general -- react to a rapidly advancing technology alternately portrayed as a panacea and a menace.

Judges in England and Wales will be able to use the AI chatbot to help write their legal rulings, the Telegraph reports. This is despite ChatGPT being prone to making up bogus cases, and the tool even admitting that it'can make mistakes' on its landing page. ChatGPT, already described by one British judge as'jolly useful', is increasingly infiltrating the legal industry, leading to concern among some experts. The Judicial Office's new official guidance, issued to thousands of judges, points out that AI can be used for summarising large amounts of text or in administrative tasks. These qualify as basic work tasks, but more salient parts of the process – such as conducting legal research or undertaking legal analysis – must not be offloaded to chatbots, the guidance claims.