THE use of AI at Barnsley Council is saving around £2m over a two-year period while also cutting training time for customer service advisors from two weeks to just two days.
Barnsley Council’s overview and scrutiny committee will meet for the first time next week and the use of artificial intelligence (AI) is the first matter at hand.
A report, which will be discussed by the committee on Tuesday, states the council are using AI to free capacity for staff rather than to do another person’s job completely.
It said: “The council is already using AI in a controlled and practical way, exclusively through approved enterprise-grade tools rather than ungoverned consumer services such as ChatGPT.
“By using only these tools the council’s data is better protected from being exposed to the internet.
“Current use of AI is primarily centred on assisting staff rather than automating end-to-end decision making.
“In practice, this includes drafting and editing documents, summarising long reports or correspondence, extracting key points from meetings, supporting information retrieval, helping structure presentations, improving routine communications, and enabling quicker synthesis of operational material.
“The emphasis is on helping officers work faster and more consistently in approved environments such as Microsoft 365 applications, rather than delegating formal decisions to AI.
“This distinction is important.
“Barnsley’s use of AI is aimed at freeing capacity for higher-value activity such as professional judgement, resident engagement, case review, service improvement and cross-organisational problem solving.”
The use of AI is also saving the council both money and time, the report said.
“The benefits of AI for the council can be grouped into organisational productivity, service quality, workforce support and resident outcomes,” the report added.
“Chatbots are seeing an increasing uptake, with 27,000 interactions recorded through 2025/26.
“Each of these potentially represents avoidable contact being channel shifted effectively, and adoption is increasing as more Chatbot capability is brought online.
“Customer service advisor training has been shortened from around two weeks to two days, meaning new recruits are able to be deployed much sooner.
“In addition, use of AI agents means that support to new and existing advisors is reduced significantly.
“AI and technology adoption is a pillar of the Enabling Barnsley strategy, and around £2m of the 2027/28 and 2028/29 efficiencies can be attributed to the council’s adoption of technology.
“As this is rolled out beyond core services efficiencies will increase.
“In addition, benefits realisation tracking is being improved to ensure benefits in the interim are comprehensively captured.”
The council are currently looking at ways to expand the scheme while ensuring any risks are mitigated.
The report added: “The principal risks associated with AI adoption are well understood and should remain central to scrutiny and governance.
“Likely areas for expansion include wider use of AI-assisted drafting and summarisation, more routine use of meeting intelligence and transcription, enhanced retrieval of corporate knowledge, and increased support for analysis and service design.
“Over time, there may also be opportunities to explore more advanced forms of automation or predictive insight in tightly governed settings, particularly where there is good-quality data, clear business need and robust human oversight.
“Alongside internal uses, Barnsley’s wider digital ecosystem points to a broader strategic direction.
“The 18-month Tech Town programme announced in February 2026 indicates continuing work with schools, Barnsley College, the South Yorkshire Institute of Technology, Barnsley Hospital, local businesses and community organisations.
“The development of The Seam as an innovation district and the ambition for a National Centre for Digital Technologies also suggest that Barnsley intends to build longer-term local capability rather than treat AI as a short-term technology trend.”
