Councillors heard AI enhanced complaints can contain “repetitive, excessive or irrelevant material”.

AI generated complaints are creating extra work for council officers as they deal with “repetitive, excessive or irrelevant material”, it has been revealed.

At a recent Portsmouth City Council governance and audit standards committee meeting, members discussed an update on complaints received throughout 2025/26.

The council handled 712 complaints during the year, 570 at stage one and 142 at stage two, an increase from the 559 complaints recorded the previous year.

A council officer said: “While this represents a significant increase, it should be viewed in context. The rise was spread across several customer facing services and reflects both high levels of customer contact and increased awareness and accessibility of the complaints process.”

Some 81 per cent of stage one complaints and 85 per cent of stage two complaints were addressed within their target timescales.

On a positive note, the council received 94 compliments, notably for housing, waste and recycling services, alongside 32 suggestions for improvement.

The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman received 56 enquiries and complaints regarding the council.

Of the 13 cases that advanced to a detailed investigation, the LGSCO upheld 12. The council achieved a 100 per cent compliance rate in implementing the Ombudsman’s recommendations for those upheld cases.

An officer added: “While complaint numbers have increased, the council continues to maintain good performance in handling complaints, learning from customer feedback and has implemented all Ombudsman’s recommendations.”

Cllr Carl Inman queried the use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools to generate complaints and the impact this was having on the complaints department’s workload.

In response, an officer said they were “seeing more correspondence that appears to have been generated or enhanced using AI tools”, which “residents are free to use”.

They said that in the future, “responses will focus on the substance of the complaint and relevant evidence rather than any repetitive, excessive or irrelevant material”.

They added: “It is affecting workload because it does take longer to get through the complaint and understand the main points.”

Cllr Inman highlighted the use of complaint templates shared on social media, which the council largely addresses individually.

He suggested the council could respond to those complaints directly on social media to prevent similar complaints from being made in the future.