Bath & North East Somerset Council is spending £65,000 to expand its use of AI, despite one councillor’s warning that the way it is using the technology could be dangerous.
Adult and children’s social care teams at the council are currently using AI tools to help with the creation of case notes, care assessments and supervision notes. Now the council is set to expand its use of AI into “resident-facing services”.
The £65,000 spending on the use of the technology was included in the council’s budget for 2025/26 which was passed on 25th February.
Presenting the budget to the council meeting, council cabinet member for resources Mark Elliott (Lansdown, Liberal Democrat) said some people thought AI was “just a gimmick”.
But he said: “By using carefully targeted tools we’re already seeing huge benefits from relatively small investments in this technology.”
Councillor Elliott said that one member of the children’s social care team reported AI had reduced their time spent on admin work by 75%. He said a member of the adult social care team said: “It has made all written work significantly easier” and estimated that using AI saved them 10 hours work a week.
Councillor Elliott added: “Our investment in AI is about helping our staff to be more efficient, reducing admin, allowing them more time to serve our residents, and this budget makes room for us to continue with these carefully targeted uses of that technology.
AI chat bots could be used to answer queries to the council from residents, summarise meetings and phone calls, and create draft council documents from multiple sources.
Councillor Elliott said: “I’m sure they won’t all be as immediately successful as the social care tool has been but we need to give ourselves room to trial innovative solutions and embed the ones that do work — because when they work the benefits can be huge.”
But Councillor David Biddleston (Keynsham South, Labour) warned: “I worry that there may be a bit of a danger, not in the AI itself but the AI delegation of report reading and writing, and it might result in workers having less understanding themselves of the projects and cases they are dealing with.
“The implications of social workers potentially not fully understanding their cases could have serious repercussions.”
The budget, passed by 36 votes to eight with seven abstentions, also increases council tax by the maximum 4.99% possible as the council deals with a “significant and unpredictable” bill for social care.
John Wimperis, Local Democracy Reporter
