Council turns to AI to handle a flood of AI-written complaints

[Edward82]

This story is the most 2026 thing I have read all week. Wiltshire Council is looking at using AI tools to help deal with a rising number of complaints, many of which are now being written with AI. The council logged 783 formal complaints in 2025-26, a 27 percent jump on the year before, with adult social care the biggest single area at 158 cases. So we now have AI writing complaints and AI helping to read them

The council says AI drafted complaints tend to be much longer than ones people write themselves. They can also contain factual mistakes or details that do not reflect the person's actual situation, which makes them slower to investigate. Wiltshire is keen to stress that AI will assist staff rather than replace them, and that humans will stay in charge of decisions

Stroud District Council has also noticed the trend, handling over 620 complaints, although it is only discussing the issue for now. It is not just councils either. A law firm has reported that AI written questions are slowing down property sales, as buyers fire off long lists of generated queries that someone then has to answer

Councillor Ruth Hopkinson summed up the unease nicely, saying the thought of AI generated complaints being answered by AI generated responses makes her blood run cold. I can see her point. Complaints are supposed to be a way for people to be heard, and if both sides are just machines talking to each other, something important is lost

On the other hand, I understand why people use AI to write them. Plenty of residents struggle to put a complaint into formal language, and a chatbot can help them feel taken seriously. The problem is when it pads things out or gets the facts wrong. Have you used AI to write a complaint or formal letter, and did it help?

Council uses AI to tackle AI-generated complaintswww.bbc.co.uk