State of the sector: Artificial intelligence – 2025 update
Benefits
The report identifies several benefits realized from AI use: staff productivity (36%), service efficiencies (33%), and cost savings (21%). The greatest AI opportunities were identified in corporate council use such as HR, administration, procurement, finance, and cyber security (88%), health and social care (adults) (49%), and advice and benefits (38%).
Details
- Tool name
- State of the sector: Artificial intelligence – 2025 update
- Organisation
- Local Government Association
- Status
- live
- AI method (as recorded)
- Not AI
- AI method (normalised tags)
- Not AI
- Usecase
- Not AI
- Origin
- local.gov.uk
- Owning team
- Local Government Association (LGA)
- Date added
- 2 June 2025
- Scrape date
- Source note
- The report is based on responses from 33% of councils. 95% of respondents were using or exploring AI. Generative AI was the most commonly adopted type (83%), followed by perceptive AI (28%) and predictive AI (20%). 68% of respondents were paying external suppliers for AI tools or technologies. Main barriers to AI deployment were lack of funding (62%), lack of staff capabilities (56%), and lack of staff capacity (52%). Main risks identified were cyber security (83%), deep fakes disinformation (69%), and organizational reputation and resident trust (68%). [Source]