UK MPs’ offices, local authorities, courts, schools and other public bodies are facing increased volumes of AI-generated correspondence, according to reporting published by The Guardian on Sunday, 8 November 2026.
The messages include complaints, requests and legal challenges that can be created within moments but require substantial staff time to read, assess and answer.
Hollie Wickens describes rising pressure in MPs’ offices
Hollie Wickens, a senior caseworker in a Labour MP’s office, said half the emails received were now produced with artificial intelligence.
Her office had seen the change develop from a trickle in 2024 into what she described as an onslaught, making correspondence more complex and taxing to handle.
The practical difficulty is not simply message volume: AI tools can produce polished, formal-sounding requests that require staff to examine their substance before responding.
ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini lower the barrier to formal complaints
Generative AI tools such as ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot and Gemini turn short user instructions into emails, complaints, applications or other detailed documents.
That access can help people without specialist knowledge present arguments in legal, administrative or technical language, although the resulting material may be unreliable.
Previously, writing a formal complaint or objecting to a planning application generally demanded more research, time and familiarity with official processes.
Local-government lawyers identify an administrative bottleneck
Deborah Evans, chief executive of Lawyers in Local Government, said organisations across sectors were experiencing similar problems with AI-generated correspondence.
Lawyers in Local Government represents 5,600 lawyers working in local authorities, placing the reported concern within councils’ existing responsibility for legal and administrative work.
Researchers at the Centre for Digital Governance at Berlin’s Hertie School, the Cooperative AI Foundation and GovAI have called mass submissions ‘agentic flooding’.
Productivity claims meet stretched public-service capacity
AI developers have promoted automation as a way to remove routine tasks and give employees more time for creative work, but the reported correspondence surge can shift effort elsewhere.
The Guardian said UK businesses, councils, courts, schools and other public bodies were dealing with greater workloads while resources were already stretched.
AI has also been credited with contributing to some better-than-expected UK gross domestic product growth this year, creating a direct tension between economy-wide gains and administrative pressure.
Half the emails we receive are some form of AI.
Hollie Wickens, senior caseworker in a Labour MP’s office, as reported by The Guardian
The immediate issue for affected organisations is how to assess and respond to growing AI-generated correspondence without allowing faster submissions to overwhelm existing staff capacity.
Related Coverage
