A new report by the County Councils Network (CCN), County Spotlight, has revealed that almost nine in ten of England’s largest councils are using artificial intelligence, yet are held back from rolling out this technology more widely due to a lack of staff capacity, funding, and training.

Although the government have promised to ‘turbocharge’ the UK’s sequestering of AI, the CCN says that councils will be crucial in whether this mission is successful enough, as concerns over funding and staffing will need to be addressed should the goal be realised.

The CCN’s survey revealed that enthusiasm to implement AI was high, with 85 per cent of respondents saying they have been using AI, and the remaining 15 per cent considering adopting or trailing this technology. For councils that have rolled out AI, 77 per cent are using it for administration, 70 per cent are using it within adult social care, and 54 per cent are using AI in children’s services and within roads maintenance.

These findings show that although councils are breaking new ground in harnessing AI within their services, such as using the ‘world’s first’ pothole prevent robot, significant progress has been hindered due to inadequate staff and training provision.

Nine in ten (93 per cent) county and unitary councils said that staff capacity was a barrier to deploying AI, and 77 per cent said that staff lacked the necessary training. 

Seven in ten county and unitary councils said funding was preventing them from deploying AI. Without these areas being address, local authority leaders warn that there is a real risk that the AI revolution will lose traction.

As this year will see the conclusion of the ‘fair funding review’, which aims to redistribute central government funding to councils, CCN warns that if the money is ultimately redistributed away from county areas it will leave those places with little scope to invest in AI, causing an urban vs rural divide with rural areas not having enough leftover funds to spend on the latest technology.

Councillor Richard Robert, economic growth spokesperson for CCN, said: “It’s not an exaggeration to say that AI offers the potential to revolutionise local services. As this report reveals, councils have been exploring AI across a range of intuitive proposals, including pothole preventing robots and in transcribing support calls.

“But our survey shows that despite the clear enthusiasm and ambition of county and unitary councils to explore and utilise AI even more, funding and staff capacity issues run the risk of this progress running out of steam at a vital team and one when government wants all four corners of the country to be firing on all digital cylinders.

“If government wants to truly turbocharge AI usage across England, then it needs to maximise the potential in all four corners of the country. That means ensuring that county and unitary areas are fairly resourced in the far funding review, enabling them to invest in technology as well as working with local government to address workforce capacity issues.”