AI Clog: Chatbot-Written Complaints Are Flooding UK Councils and MPs’ Offices

Across Britain, the inboxes of the people who run public services are filling up faster than anyone can clear them. A letter that once took an evening to write can now be produced in seconds by a chatbot, and the organisations receiving them say the result is a flood of correspondence longer, more formal and far harder to deal with than anything they have seen before. Staff in MPs’ offices and town halls describe the same pattern. Researchers call it AI clog.

The Guardian reported the story on 8 November 2026, drawing on interviews with council lawyers, parliamentary caseworkers and the Information Commissioner’s Office. What began as a small rise in 2024 has become a daily deluge, and the systems built to deal with complaints were never designed for this volume.

Complaints that used to fit on two pages

The most obvious sign of a machine-drafted letter is its length. Deborah Evans, chief executive of Lawyers in Local Government, which represents around 5,600 council lawyers, told the Guardian that complaints once averaged about two pages. Most now run about ten times that length, she said, and the largest she knows of stretched to roughly 200 pages. They cover everything from adult social care to planning objections, and councils get no extra funding for the extra work, so longer letters mean slower answers for everyone.

Length is only part of the problem. AI-written letters are often technically worded but wrong in substance, citing laws or court cases that do not apply in the UK. Evans described one case in which a complaint sent to a British council cited Canadian case law. Staff still have to read the whole document and write a proper reply: the Information Commissioner’s Office says even requests with inaccuracies still need a human response.

Half the inbox, according to one MP’s office

Hollie Wickens, a senior caseworker in a Labour MP’s office, told the Guardian that about half of the emails her team receives now show signs of AI drafting. A decade in the role, she described the change as a shift from a trickle in 2024 to an onslaught now. The letters arrive longer and more complex, and the office must answer them with the same staff it had before the tools existed.

The picture is similar at Transport for London, which logged a record 4,769 freedom of information requests in 2025-26, about 5 percent above its previous peak in 2023-24. Committee papers cited by the Guardian recorded a rise in appeals that appeared AI-generated, often with technical but inaccurate claims. The Information Commissioner’s Office reported a noticeable rise in the number of requests it received in 2025, noting that many were very long and repetitive. Employment tribunals are under the same strain: single-claim cases opened between April and June rose 28 percent to about 14,000, leaving roughly 70,000 open by the end of June.

Why chatbots changed the maths of complaining

The tools behind the surge are familiar names: ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot and Gemini. ChatGPT turns four later this month, and these chatbots have handed almost anyone a free legal adviser and administrative assistant. A person with a grievance can ask a chatbot to write the strongest possible complaint, and it will oblige with a long, formal document in seconds.

Writing used to be the bottleneck: a long complaint once took hours of research and typing, which limited how many people sent one and how long each one ran. Now producing a 20-page letter costs close to zero, while reading it and answering it properly still falls on a human being. Researchers at the Hertie School in Berlin, working with the Cooperative AI Foundation and GovAI, call the pattern agentic flooding, and warn it risks overwhelming the institutions citizens rely on.

The view from the council chamber

Councillors are seeing the same change in their own postbags. Alessandro Georgiou, a councillor in Enfield, told the Guardian that residents are increasingly using AI-generated letters to appeal council decisions, and he pointed to a significant uptick in parking appeals. A long, formal letter used to signal a serious dispute over a parking fine or a planning decision. When a chatbot can produce one in seconds, the signal gets weaker and the workload gets heavier.

Some public bodies are responding with limits: ombudsmen are introducing caps on complaint length, form-based intake and attachment limits, to keep the process manageable. Other councils are looking at fighting fire with fire: Wiltshire Council is exploring using AI to summarise long emails and draft initial replies, while keeping decisions in human hands. Neither approach is simple: a length limit risks shutting out people who need space to explain a complex problem, and people who struggle to write benefit most from chatbot help.

What happens next

The story lands as artificial intelligence is being credited with some of the UK’s stronger than expected growth this year. For the public bodies answering the letters, the effect has run in the opposite direction, with no sign of slowing down. Chatbots are getting better, cheaper and easier to use, and the next generation of AI agents will be able to send messages and chase replies with even less human effort. That leaves councils, MPs’ offices, courts and schools with a difficult choice: put up barriers that risk excluding the people who need help most, or handle far more correspondence with the same resources. The old way of handling complaints, one letter at a time, no longer matches the speed at which the letters arrive.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the AI clog?

AI clog is the name given to the flood of chatbot-written complaints, requests and legal challenges now reaching UK public bodies. Complaints that once averaged about two pages now often run ten times longer, and staff say the volume is straining services built for far less mail. Researchers also call the pattern agentic flooding.

How long are the AI-written complaints?

According to Deborah Evans of Lawyers in Local Government, most AI-drafted complaints to local authorities now run about ten times the old two-page average, and the largest she knows of reached roughly 200 pages. Transport for London logged a record 4,769 requests in 2025-26, about 5 percent above its previous peak.

Are councils allowed to limit long complaints?

Some ombudsmen are introducing limits on complaint length, form-based intake and attachment caps, according to the Guardian. The Information Commissioner’s Office has said that even requests containing inaccuracies still need a human response, so limits must be set carefully to avoid shutting out people with genuine problems.