Daily Update, 27 September 2026: Wiltshire Council Sees Growing Evidence of AI-Drafted Complaints, and Explores AI to Manage Them

Wiltshire Council says it saw increasing evidence of residents using artificial intelligence tools to help draft their complaints, and that it is exploring how AI can help it manage them, according to the council's Annual Complaints Performance and Service Improvement Report 2025-26, reported by Local Democracy Reporter Peter Davison in the Wiltshire Gazette and Herald on 27 September 2026.

The report was on the agenda for the council's cross-party Overview and Scrutiny Management Committee meeting of 23 September.

What the council says AI is changing

In its foreword, the report says that during 2025-26 "the council saw increasing evidence of residents using Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools to help draft complaints". It says these tools are making it quicker and easier for some residents to raise concerns.

The council also sets out the downside as it sees it. According to the report, AI-generated complaints are often significantly longer than traditional correspondence and can contain inaccurate factual assertions, misunderstandings of council responsibilities or erroneous legal references. That, it says, can "make it more challenging to identify the complainant's personal experience and the core issues requiring investigation".

The share of contacts to the Complaints team handled as formal complaints fell slightly, from 28% to 25%, and the report says this "is likely to be linked" to residents' growing use of AI tools, "which tend to phrase concerns more formally and direct residents towards formal complaint procedures".

The Public Protection section says it has noted an increase in complainants using AI to create letters and to research legislation, which it says has resulted in "an increase in complexity of complaints" and "is likely to have contributed to the number of complaints received by the LGSCO", the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman.

The council's own use of AI

The report says the council is "also exploring the benefits that AI can bring to complaint management", and that "AI tools are supporting more efficient administration and helping officers focus their time on investigation, resolution and service improvement."

It says that during 2026-27 the council will continue to explore these opportunities and develop guidance on the responsible use of AI in complaint handling. Its stated approach is to "embrace innovation while ensuring that human judgement, fairness and a clear understanding of residents' experiences remain at the heart of complaint resolution." The report adds that its complaints webpage now includes guidance on using AI tools in the complaints process.

The report does not say which AI tools the council uses, and does not describe AI writing replies to residents. The Gazette and Herald's report describes the council as "using AI tools to respond to the spiralling number of complaints generated by AI".

At the committee, according to the LDRS report, Cllr Ruth Hopkinson (Corsham Ladbrook, Liberal Democrat) said: "The thought of AI-generated complaints being responded to by AI-generated responses makes my blood turn cold."

The numbers

According to the council's report:

• The council received 783 formal complaints in 2025-26, up 27% on the previous year and up 112% on four years earlier.
• Its Complaints team handled 2,384 service requests, up 40% on the previous year.
• The four services with the most complaints were Adult Social Care (158), Families and Children (120), Education and Skills (119) and Housing Services (116), together more than half of all complaints.
• Complaints about Highways, Transport and Streetscene rose by 69%; the most common topics were highways (40%) and passenger transport (39%), and the report links the rise to an increased incidence of potholes. Housing Allocations and Homelessness complaints rose by 95%, and Parking and Enforcement by 117%.
• The proportion of Stage 1 and Stage 2 complaints answered within Ombudsman timescales rose compared with the previous year.

The report puts the rise in national context. It says the Ombudsman reported a 33% increase in the total complaints it received, compared with a 32% increase in the complaints it received about Wiltshire Council. It also says the Ombudsman upheld 83% of the complaints about Wiltshire it investigated, below the 85% average for unitary councils nationally.

The report does not attribute a specific share of the increase to AI. Its summary of the main services says complaints rose in Adult Social Care by 42%, Families and Children by 62% and Education and Skills by 7%, while complaints about Housing Services fell by 7%.

Other bodies are setting rules too

Wiltshire is not alone. In August, Herald.Wales and Nation.Cymru reported that Newport City Council had adopted a new complaints policy, with an accompanying report warning that AI-generated content "can sometimes contain incorrect, incomplete, or unsupported information". The reports say the policy asks residents to "review any AI-assisted content carefully before submission", and says the council may itself use AI to support "limited administrative aspects" of complaints, including "drafting correspondence". According to those reports, the policy says AI is not used to decide complaint outcomes or remedies, and officers will review content after AI is used.

The Ombudsman's own public guidance takes a different angle. Its top tips page for complainants says: "Avoid writing long letters or emails – if you struggle to write briefly there are online tools such as AI that can help summarise your complaint for you." Separately, its guidance on information requests advises people not to ask AI "to add formal legal language or make your request sound more 'official'", and to check that any AI-generated text accurately reflects the request.

Why it matters

On our reading, the Wiltshire report is useful because it comes from the receiving end: a council's own annual report, rather than a survey, describing what AI-assisted complaints look like in practice. Its concern is length, accuracy and legal references, not the use of AI as such, which lines up with the Ombudsman's advice to keep complaints brief, using AI to summarise if needed, and its separate advice not to use AI to make information requests sound more "official".

Also on our reading, the council's report is careful in what it claims: it says AI is "likely" linked to some shifts and is "supporting more efficient administration", but it gives no figure for how many complaints were AI-drafted and does not say AI is writing responses.