From EHCPs To Blue Badges: How Havering Council Could Use AI
AI could support EHCP drafting, Blue Badge applications, council enquiries and social-care work, but many of the proposals have not yet been approved.
Havering Council will face questions over its current and proposed use of artificial intelligence when the Overview and Scrutiny Board meets on Thursday 24 September.
Council papers describe six areas where AI or automation could potentially be used. These include voice and online assistance for routine enquiries, Education, Health and Care Plan drafting, Freedom of Information responses, Blue Badge applications, licensing, registrars, housing analysis, social-care costs and fraud detection.
The presentation makes clear that several of these opportunities remain under discussion and have not yet been approved for delivery.
Some technology is already being used. Beam Magic Notes records conversations, produces transcripts and drafts structured notes for practitioners to review. The council says approximately 100,000 notes had been created by September, including around 30,000 one-hour units of use within Starting Well for notes and EHCP drafting.
Professional review is supposed to remain essential, with service-user consent required before information enters a case record.
The council is also considering an AI “front door” for web and telephone enquiries. A proof of concept reportedly achieved 96 per cent on general knowledge and 92 per cent on comparative meaning. The proposed first phase would place an AI agent on one departmental phone line, with a human fallback and safeguarding controls.
Other ideas include checking evidence for Blue Badge, registrar and licensing transactions, finding material for draft FOI responses and analysing housing voids, demand, social-care costs and possible fraud patterns.
Key questions include how residents will be told when AI is involved, what personal information the systems will process, how mistakes can be challenged and whether equality, privacy and accuracy assessments will be published.
The full proposals can be read in the official council presentation.
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