UK public bodies drown in 'AI clog' as chatbot complaints pile up

Chatbot-written complaints are piling up on the desks of UK councils, courts, schools, watchdogs and MPs' offices — and the humans on the other side can't keep up. Hollie Wickens, a senior caseworker in a Labour MP's office, told the Guardian that roughly half the emails her team receives are now some form of AI, and that a decade on the job hasn't made them easier to untangle. Researchers at the Hertie School in Berlin's centre for digital governance, the Cooperative AI Foundation and GovAI have a name for the tactic: agentic flooding. Commenters have settled on a shorter one — 'AI clog'.

The numbers are ugly. Deborah Evans, chief executive of Lawyers in Local Government, which represents 5,600 local authority lawyers, said complaints that once ran about two pages are now typically ten times that, with the worst she's seen hitting roughly 200 pages. AI can make a complaint read as polished and formal, she added — but it can also drag in statutes and case law that have nothing to do with the jurisdiction in question, sometimes citing Canadian rulings, and occasionally just making things up. 'Local authorities have one pot of money and don't get extra money because of more complaints,' she said.

The Information Commissioner's Office found public authorities fielded more requests in 2025, and noted that AI-drafted ones tend to be long, repetitive and vague about what's actually being asked for — while still legally requiring a human answer. Transport for London logged a record 4,769 freedom of information requests in 2025-26, up 5% on its previous peak, and its audit and assurance committee has flagged a rise in appeals that look AI-generated and lean on 'highly technical and often inaccurate' claims, according to meeting minutes. Enfield council leader Alessandro Georgiou pointed to a sharp jump in parking appeals as residents increasingly lean on chatbots to fight decisions.

The pressure is spilling into employment disputes too. Tribunal claims opened between April and June jumped 28% year on year to 14,000 from single claimants, with 70,000 such cases still open at the end of June. One tech start-up founder facing a dismissal challenge from a former employee expects to burn £30,000 in legal fees before it's heard — and says the wording gives the AI authorship away. Jim Moore of employee relations firm Hamilton Nash said his clients are getting letters that are 'unnecessarily verbose', inflate minor incidents, and often forget to state what outcome the complainant actually wants.

Parliamentary offices are hurting as well. Vonnie Sandlan, head of office for Labour MP Graeme Downie, said her team is 'exhausted' and working unpaid extra hours, and that the office has stopped answering automated 'click to email your MP' campaigns to protect time for real constituents. The GMB union's Lisa Gillmore, who leads its MPs' and peers' staff branch, said casework has doubled or more wherever offices track their own figures, with no let-up for staff carrying it. Evans' warning is blunt: every pound a council spends clearing clogged correspondence is a pound it isn't spending anywhere else.