‘AI clog’: UK public bodies swamped by chatbot-generated complaints

“It started as a trickle in 2024 and now it’s an onslaught,” said Hollie Wickens, a senior caseworker in a Labour MP’s office. “Half the emails we receive are some form of AI,” she said. Wickens, who has a decade of experience in the role, said the surge has made requests and complaints much more complex and time-consuming to handle. “It is definitely more taxing.”

The wave follows the rapid growth of ChatGPT, which turns four later this month, along with Claude, Copilot, Gemini and other generative tools that give people access to a free, though sometimes unreliable, legal adviser and administrator. AI has been credited with some of this year’s better-than-expected UK GDP growth, but public bodies say the correspondence is gumming up their operations. Researchers at the Hertie School in Berlin, the Cooperative AI Foundation and GovAI have labelled the practice “agentic flooding”.

Enfield council leader Alessandro Georgiou called it “a real problem”, pointing to a significant uptick in residents using AI to appeal council decisions, including parking appeals. Deborah Evans, chief executive of Lawyers in Local Government, which represents 5,600 local authority lawyers, said “every sector is experiencing very similar issues”, with complaints covering adult social care, missed bin collections and planning objections. Before the widespread use of chatbots, the average complaint ran to about two pages; most are now 10 times longer, Evans said. “You get some huge ones. The worst one I’m aware of at the moment is about 200 pages long.” She said AI tools often treat complaints as legal claims, citing statute and case law “not necessarily tied to the jurisdictional boundaries in which you operate”, and are slightly prone to hallucinations and occasionally make things up.

The Information Commissioner’s Office found many public authorities received more requests in 2025, and noted that AI-generated requests can be “very long, repetitive and contain unrelated comments or misdirected demands”. It has cautioned that such requests, even with inaccuracies, still need to be answered by humans.

The pattern extends to employers. Employment tribunal claims opened between April and June rose 28% on a year earlier, representing 14,000 cases from single claimants, with 70,000 single claims open at the end of June. Jim Moore, an employee relations expert at Hamilton Nash, said many of his clients are receiving correspondence that is entirely or heavily AI-generated. Complaints received by employers are described as “unnecessarily verbose” and containing “embellished or exaggerated claims that portray relatively minor incidents as major offences”. Moore said the complaints often miss the most important point: what resolution the complainant wants. One technology start-up founder facing a tribunal claim from a former employee said: “Everyone’s got a free lawyer now.”

Transport for London received a record 4,769 freedom of information requests in 2025-26, up 5% on the previous peak in 2023-24. Minutes of its audit and assurance committee reported a “noted increase” in appeals that appeared to be AI-generated, “which often contain highly technical and often inaccurate assertions and assumptions”.

Vonnie Sandlan, head of office for Graeme Downie, the Labour MP for Dunfermline and Dollar, said the surge has left her staff “exhausted”. “They are stretched to the limits and working more hours than they are paid,” she said. While she noted AI agents could help people who struggle to draft correspondence, her office has stopped responding to automated “click to email your MP” campaigns to focus on constituents. Lisa Gillmore, president of the GMB union’s MPs’ and peers’ staff branch, said: “AI is not lightening the load in MPs’ offices. Where offices keep their own figures, that casework has doubled or more and staff are carrying it with no let-up.”

Some ombudsman services are imposing word limits or designing online templates to restrict attachments; Wiltshire council is exploring using AI to summarise long emails and draft initial responses. Researchers have suggested charging fees for submitting requests or blocking bots from government websites. The government has advised civil servants to verify facts, avoid inputting personal data and ensure humans review the work and take final decisions. Technology journalist Jamie Bartlett, who has been approached by people sharing experiences of AI clog, said public bodies will probably have to use some form of AI to filter correspondence or set stricter rules on what they accept. “Otherwise I worry they’re going to get completely overwhelmed.”