From Automation to AI: Building Next Generation Council Services

The challenge

Responding to financial pressures and the need to make savings while maintaining vital services, Kirklees Council began its Govtech automation journey in 2010, expanding its Benefits solution to include Revenues in 2014.

At the beginning, residents had limited opportunities to self-serve online, creating high volumes of manual processing and avoidable contact centre demand. Reducing non-statutory services was not sustainable – they needed more efficient delivery.

Growing housing numbers, rising customer expectations and continued pressure on resources mean the council continues to look for new ways to manage workload, prevent backlogs and improve the experience for residents and employees.

That ambition extends to customer service. Having used Liberty Converse for many years, Kirklees recently migrated to the latest cloud-based, AI-powered version, reflecting its wider shift towards automation and digital-first services.

The solution

Maximising automation across Revenues

As part of a wider digital transformation strategy, Kirklees set out to move Council Tax and Business rates online and maximise automation across Revenues. The objective was to reduce manual effort, allowing teams to focus on collection, recovery and supporting residents who need assistance.

The council implemented Govtech’s webCAPTURE digital process automation service alongside web forms enabling residents to complete transactions online.

Initial concerns about customer adoption and the impact on staff roles quickly subsided. Automation now handles most routine revenues transactions and is considered business critical.

“It would be a disaster if the automation was switched off. Now that we automate 85% of processes, it plays a vital role in maintaining high service levels and allows our team to focus on the complex enquiries, supporting vulnerable residents.”

Lisa Webster

Project Manager, Revenues & Benefits, Kirklees Council

Automation enables Kirklees to provide consistently good service and operational efficiency – processing increasing transactions due to housing growth, without increasing staff levels.

Next level digital customer service

With automation deeply ingrained across Revenues and Benefits, the council took the same approach with digital customer service in 2026, using digital tools and AI to make interactions easier, give employees better tools and create more capacity.

Migrating to the cloud version of Liberty Converse, marked a new chapter and gave Kirklees a stronger and more adaptable foundation for its next phase.

The council aims to:

1. Increase officer self-service to provide quick access to information, knowledge content and resources, reducing reliance on manual support.
2. Improve contact portal match rates, increasing successful matches from the current 62% towards a target of 80%, helping reduce avoidable demand on switchboard and contact centre teams.
3. Introduce AI-powered services to automate responses to simple enquiries and support more consistent customer experiences.

“We’re at the beginning of our journey with Liberty Converse and we chose it for the flexibility and capability it offered us to modernise our contact centre, which supports the council ambitions of delivering better services for residents. With further upgrades going live soon, we’re introducing new functionality, helping us to continually improve consistency, efficiency and overall customer experience.”

Anita Chatfield-Waterhouse

Integrated Content Centre Manager, Kirklees Council

The result

Verified by Kirklees Council – November 2026