We Don’t Need Algorithms to Prove Who Is Breaking the Rules
The Local Government Chronicle has just published a revealing article outlining a new panic among council chiefs: they claim they are being overwhelmed by a “flood” of complex, 200-page, AI-generated complaints from the public
They complain that these submissions are full of fake case law and are too difficult for their non-legally trained officers to “unpick.”
In response, councils are drafting “Unreasonable Behaviour Policies” and “halting the clock” on statutory deadlines to shield themselves from this correspondence.
We must be very clear here : the National Residents for Civic Accountability (NRCA) is not challenging councils with 200-page AI hallucinations.
We are challenging them with hard facts. We use their own admissions, their own statistics, their own data, their formal FOI replies, and the official written statements of their own ministers and corporate bodies.
In order to collect this undeniable evidence, dedicated residents have been questioning the authorities for years. We built this national record long before the councils themselves digitalised their services, hid behind web portals, and deployed their own AI to “manage” and deflect the public.
Years ago, ordinary people learned a hard lesson about how the administrative machine works. We realised that emotion, irrational thinking, and standard, harmless, sour moaning is exactly what the council expects from residents.
They want you to be emotional. They want you to complain about the traffic, the view, or your feelings—because an emotional complaint is incredibly easy for an officer to dismiss with a patronising, templated apology.
But when you strip away the emotion and present them with a targeted, legally sound question based on their own missing data, the machine breaks.
Manchester City Council guidance (example of resident advice):
“We would warn that AI-generated content can be irrelevant, misleading or even false. We gain the best understanding of your complaint when it is raised clearly and succinctly in your own words.”
Hertfordshire CC guidance:
“It’s best to write your complaint in your own words. This helps us better understand what happened and how it affected you… Using AI is OK but it can delay how quickly we deal with your complaint, make mistakes or make up incorrect ‘facts’, make complaints too long or complicated, or include legal language or references that are unnecessary or inaccurate.”
Now that residents are systematically challenging them with precise statutory notices and undeniable evidence, the authorities are panicking. They are accusing the public of using AI because they are projecting their own digital profile onto us.
They literally cannot comprehend that ordinary residents, working together, are capable of out-researching them and holding them to account.
The truth is, councils can no longer reply by themselves to lawful, evidenced questions. They are desperate to deploy their own AI to summarise our letters and draft their preliminary responses.
But they will soon find that their AI technology is missing the core human characteristics that truly define the modern administrative officer: ignorance, and authoritarian self-worship. AI follows logic.
Humans… follow whatever was scribbled on the back of a meeting minutes no one remembers calling.
Ruth Hopkinson (Lib Dem), Wiltshire councillor:
“The thought of AI-generated complaints being responded to by AI-generated responses makes my blood turn cold.”
They can rewrite their “Unreasonable Behaviour Policies” all they want. Our NRCA Formal Letters don’t rely on rambling algorithms or creative reinterpretations of reality.. They rely on the Localism Act, the Local Government Act, and their own written admissions that they do not hold the data to justify their decisions.
They rely on evidence, procedure, and accountability, three things bureaucracy keeps trying to replace with buzzwords.
They asked for residents to write to them clearly and succinctly. We are doing exactly that.
Join the national pushback against the bureaucracy and the agenda nobody ever asked for, yet they all keep acting under the “serving our communities” umbrella.
To be fair, they are serving communities…just their own carefully selected ones.
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