Hollie Wickens, a senior caseworker in a Labour MP’s office, describes the daily reality as an "onslaught" that began as a trickle in 2024. She reports that half the emails her team receives are some form of AI, making requests much more complex and time-consuming to read despite her decade of experience. This shift has turned routine administrative tasks into a burden for staff who previously spent considerable effort researching topics or filling out formal forms. The rapid growth of generative AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, and Gemini over the past couple of years has given laypeople access to free legal advisers and administrators. While developers promised productivity gains, with AI credited for some of this year’s better than expected UK GDP growth, public bodies are instead reporting being swamped by a flood of correspondence. Researchers at the centre for digital governance at the Hertie School in Berlin, the Cooperative AI Foundation, and GovAI have labelled this phenomenon "agentic flooding," noting that these documents take moments for users to create but huge amounts of human time to sift through.
Local authorities and courts under strain
Deborah Evans, chief executive of Lawyers in Local Government, which represents 5,600 lawyers, states that every sector is experiencing very similar issues. Local authorities report surging numbers of complaints ranging from adult social care services to missed bin collections and planning objections. Before widespread chatbot use, the average complaint was about two pages long; the majority are now ten times longer, with Evans citing one specific example that reached 200 pages. Councillor Alessandro Georgiou, leader of Enfield council, confirms a significant uptick in parking appeals driven by residents using AI to challenge decisions. The Information Commissioner’s Office found that many public authorities received more requests in 2025, noting that AI-generated demands are often very long, repetitive, and contain unrelated comments or misdirected demands. These documents frequently cite statute and case law, sometimes pulling from jurisdictions like Canada or hallucinating facts entirely, yet the ICO cautions that such requests still need to be answered by humans. Transport for London received a record 4,769 freedom of information requests in 2025-26, a 5% increase on the previous peak, while its audit committee noted a rise in appeals containing highly technical and often inaccurate assertions. Employment tribunal claims opened between April and June soared by 28% compared with a year earlier, representing 14,000 cases from single claimants, while concluded cases fell, resulting in 70,000 open single claims at the end of June. Jim Moore, an employee relations expert at Hamilton Nash, observes that many of these complaints are unnecessarily verbose and miss the most important point: what resolution the complainant actually wants.
Staff exhaustion and emerging countermeasures
Vonnie Sandlan, head of office for Graeme Downie, the Labour MP for Dunfermline and Dollar, says dealing with the surge has left her staff exhausted and stretched to the limits. Her office has recently decided to stop responding to automated "click to email your MP" campaigns to focus on genuine constituent requests. Lisa Gillmore, president of the MPs’ and peers’ staff branch of the GMB union, adds that where offices keep their own figures, casework has doubled or more. Some ombudsman services are now imposing word limits for complaints or designing online templates to restrict attachments, while Wiltshire council explores using AI tools to summarise long emails and draft initial responses. Stroud district council has also discussed using Microsoft’s Copilot to help write reports and present information. However, Evans warns that every pound spent by local authorities on dealing with complaints is a pound not spent on something else, creating a financial pressure that forces difficult choices. Jamie Bartlett, a technology journalist, notes that public bodies will probably have to use some form of AI to filter things out or set stricter rules on what they accept. He expresses concern that without such measures, organisations are going to get completely overwhelmed by the relentless volume of machine-generated text. The UK government has issued civil servants advice on using AI tools, including verifying facts provided and ensuring humans review the work and take final decisions.
