Practical AI Use Cases in Local Government: Three Proven Use Cases

5th November 2025

by Mark Gannon

AI isn’t new to local government. But what’s changed is how it’s being applied. Across the UK, councils are moving beyond pilots and hype to deploy real, working AI that reduces demand, frees capacity and improves citizen experience.

That shift was the focus of a Netcall webinar co-hosted with Socitm – where we explored three proven, real-world use cases that show how AI can enhance front-line and back-office operations.

And these examples aren’t just theoretical. They’re already transforming services – and demonstrating how councils can scale AI safely and sustainably.

The clips below feature highlights from our ‘AI Use Cases in Local Government’ webinar. Each transcript explains how councils are safely applying AI across contact, case management and compliance.

1. Smarter citizen contact: Autonomous agents that understand context

When residents call or message a council, they’re not thinking in service silos. They just want things done – to pay a bill, report a missed bin or get support.

That’s where autonomous agents – powered by agentic AI and integrated within Netcall’s Liberty platform – are changing the game. In the webinar, we demonstrated how an AI-powered voice and chat agent could manage three services in a single interaction with no hand-offs: Checking a council tax balance, reporting a waste issue and signposting to social care.

The difference? It wasn’t scripted. The agent recognised natural conversation, authenticated securely and corrected misunderstandings. It even sent follow-up links by SMS for self-service and logged cases in the CRM.

For citizens, that means faster answers. For staff, that means fewer repeat calls, reduced backlogs and more time for complex cases.

Digital inclusion was also front and centre: The same agent could detect and translate language automatically, providing multilingual support without needing extra staff or external interpreters.

“AI now supports both citizens and staff. It detects language, responds conversationally and connects instantly with live data – all inside a secure local environment.”

Mark Gannon

Director of Client Solutions, Netcall

2. From overload to insight: Using AI to summarise feedback

Few challenges test local authority capacity like consultation responses, surveys or correspondence. Hundreds – sometimes thousands – of written submissions can take weeks to review. And AI summarisation changes that.

In the session, we explored how AI can automatically categorise, cluster and summarise feedback – grouping common themes, identifying sentiment and even flagging whether responses come from inside or outside the local area.

What once took weeks can now be distilled into structured insights in minutes. And most importantly, your team members stay in control – keeping the human in the loop to review, amend or approve results.

Beyond planning consultations, councils are now using similar models for:

1. Customer feedback from social channels or web forms
2. Complaint trends to identify recurring service issues

3. Intelligent document processing: Turning paper and images into action

Every council still deals with forms, PDFs and images that can take a long time to process, even with traditional automation.

And that’s where Liberty IDP (intelligent document processing) comes in. With AI, it can read, understand and extract information from structured or unstructured documents and images.

Think of a housing application form. IDP can scan the document, classify it, verify data (like names or reference numbers) and push that data into the right workflow – without manual re-keying.

Councils are applying this in:

1. Revenues and Benefits claims
2. Environmental health reports
3. HR and recruitment onboarding
4. Housing repairs and tenancy forms.

By linking IDP to workflow automation, councils are achieving end-to-end efficiency – from capture to case resolution.

4. Human + AI: A smarter partnership

Throughout the webinar, one theme stood out: AI works best when it complements people, not replaces them.

“You wouldn’t hand over 100% of decision-making to AI. It’s about using it intelligently – where it adds true value.”

Mark Gannon

Director of Client Solutions, Netcall

The most successful councils embed human-in-the-loop principles. That ensures staff always review or approve AI outputs. And by doing this, you build trust, confidence and ethical assurance, while still capturing efficiency gains.

In practice, this means:

1. Setting review thresholds for automated summaries or classifications
2. Auditing accuracy regularly
3. Training staff to understand and oversee AI processes.

5. From projects to platforms: Building sustainable AI capability

Each of these examples – autonomous agents, summarisation and document processing — delivers real, measurable benefit. But the real power comes when councils connect them through a single platform.

When front-office interactions feed seamlessly into automated workflows and insights from citizen data loop back into service design, councils can create a self-improving digital ecosystem.

That’s the principle behind Liberty’s AI: A modular approach allowing local authorities to trial, adapt and scale AI safely within their existing systems.

It’s not about replacing technology. It’s about making what’s already there work smarter.

Q&A: Practical AI in local government

About the author

Mark Gannon

Director of Client Solutions

Mark is Director of Client Solutions at Netcall and is on a mission to put the power of digital transformation into the hands of every public sector organisation. He's a former CIO and transformation specialist who worked for over 20 years in several local authorities, including Sheffield City Council, Nottingham City Council, Rotherham Council and Middlesbrough Council. Mark also spent time as a consultant, supporting organisations to take advantage of digital technology.