In the spotlight: Lancashire County Council uses AI to give social workers more time with people

Background

Lancashire County Council serves more than 1.3 million residents across one of England’s largest local authorities. Some of its most demanding work takes place in adult services, children’s services and special educational needs, where practitioners support people through some of the most difficult moments in their lives.

The council recognised that administrative tasks were taking valuable time away from frontline practice. Staff feedback highlighted the amount of time spent reviewing, recording and documenting visits, reducing opportunities to build relationships with the people they support.

Challenge

Lancashire wanted to reduce the administrative burden on social workers while ensuring AI was used to support, rather than replace, professional judgement.

The council’s objectives included:

• Reducing repetitive administrative work
• Improving the efficiency of case recording
• Giving practitioners more time to engage with residents
• Maintaining professional oversight of all safeguarding and care decisions

“Spending time on admin was not what our practitioners signed up to do when they decided to become social workers. By reducing that burden, we can give them more time to focus on helping families,” said Amisha Chauhan, digital innovation manager at Lancashire County Council.

Solution

Lancashire introduced Microsoft 365 Copilot to support practitioners with routine documentation.

Instead of writing up every visit from scratch, social workers can capture a spoken account using tools such as Teams or Facilitator on their phone. Microsoft 365 Copilot then helps turn that material into structured case notes and draft documentation in the appropriate format. Staff review the output, apply their professional judgement and make all final decisions.

Rather than introducing the technology in isolation, the council worked closely with frontline teams to identify where administrative pressure was greatest and where AI could provide the most benefit. This collaborative approach helped shape tools and prompts around existing working practices, templates and reporting requirements.

“With the emergence of generative AI, there was a real opportunity to change how we work. But success depended on building solutions with the people using them every day,” said Peter Lloyd, director of digital at Lancashire County Council.

Result

According to the council, using Microsoft 365 Copilot has helped reduce duplication in recording and produce more consistent documentation more efficiently. Rather than recreating information from scratch, practitioners begin with a structured draft that they refine to meet the council’s standards and language.

In children’s services, AI is used “strictly to support professional judgement”, with practitioners retaining full responsibility for safeguarding decisions. In adult services, draft reports that once took hours to produce can now be created much more quickly and used as the starting point for practitioner review.

“It gives people more time to do the really important face-to-face work. Those conversations help us tailor support properly to each person,” said Brett Aspden, mental health social care lead at Lancashire County Council.

Next steps

The council has now rolled out Microsoft 365 Copilot to thousands of staff, with around two-thirds of the workforce actively using AI tools through a mix of free and paid licences. Plans are in place to expand further.

For Lloyd, the objective remains unchanged: “What we’ve really tried to do is give our people more time to engage, build relationships, and deliver care.”