Building Local Transcribe for local government

Frontline staff in local government spend a significant amount of time turning conversations into written records. Case notes, assessments and follow‑up letters are often completed when time allows between appointments, meetings and caseload pressures, reducing the time available to support people directly.

Local Transcribe is a new AI-powered tool designed to change that by capturing conversations, transcribing and summarising them, and producing a draft set of case notes for officers to review and edit.

We’re building it with councils and the people who’ll use it. We’re working closely with Birmingham, Hart, Maidstone, Trafford and Haringey, and we’re very grateful for the time, openness and expertise they’ve brought to shaping the product. Their input is directly influencing what we build and how it works in practice.

This work is part of the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government's (MHCLG’s) Local AI programme. Our role is to work with councils to support the responsible adoption of AI across local government, focusing on practical tools that save time, reduce costs and improve services. Local Transcribe is the first product in that programme.

It builds on Minute, developed by the Incubator for AI (i.AI) and piloted with 22 councils using real case data. We’re taking what worked and evolving it into a scalable service for wider use across local government, starting with housing.

A mocked-up interview recording to demonstrate the Local Transcribe tool. Why we're doing this

Housing and homelessness are key policy areas in MHCLG, and the pressure on housing teams in local councils is acute. Housing officers are managing high caseloads across a broad range of service areas, including temporary accommodation, homelessness and supporting asylum seekers.

The administrative burden around each case takes up a significant share of officer time – time that could otherwise be spent with people who need their support.

The features housing officers need, such as recording on a phone during a home visit or working offline when there's no signal, are the same features required by officers across other frontline services.

Adult social care, children's social care, and special educational needs and disability are all priority areas for councils. By getting the foundations right in housing, we are building something that can scale into those services next.

What we're focused on

Local Transcribe has 3 areas of focus:

Designing around frontline workflows

We are working with housing officers to understand their end-to-end workflows, including the case management systems they use, the range of interactions they have with residents, and the different outputs each interaction requires.

Building for production

We are moving Local Transcribe from pilot to a fully operational service, built to handle sensitive data responsibly, meet the security and data protection standards required across local government, and scale to more councils and more service domains over time.

Producing drafts officers can trust

Local Transcribe produces a draft transcript and summary for the officer to review and edit if necessary. We will run continuous automated evaluations on transcription accuracy, summarisation quality, and bias across protected characteristics, to ensure the draft is reliable.

What we are doing Design Co‑designing Local Transcribe with partner councils across a range of geographies, sizes and housing service areas, ensuring what we build reflects the breadth of local government. Designing human‑in‑the‑loop workflows so no AI‑generated content reaches a case record without officer review, reflecting what we are hearing from councils: “Nothing AI‑generated should go onto a case without being checked.” Building a clear monitoring and evaluation approach, baselining key metrics with councils to understand time spent on case notes, how backlogs build, and what meaningful reduction looks like in practice. Building Building Local Transcribe using the GOV.UK Design System, embedding accessibility from the start and ensuring it will be independently assessed before launch. Standing up the core technical infrastructure to support a full service and future scaling, alongside the data protection and cyber security needed to handle sensitive casework responsibly. Building automated data pipelines for continuous evaluation, enabling us to monitor quality, detect bias over time and move away from periodic manual reviews. Preparing for a trial with our partner councils mentioned above, by grounding the product in real operational baselines, so we can measure genuine impact from day one.

Since the programme began, we have been working in partnership with i.AI to agree a shared vision for how Local Transcribe develops beyond the original Minute pilot. We are also working with the Local Government Association (LGA) to learn from the councils already using Minute and carry those insights into what we build next.

Looking ahead

We’re working towards an early access launch with a small group of partner councils later this year. This will act as a private beta, with housing officers using Local Transcribe in their day‑to‑day work. It will help us understand what works, what doesn’t, and where the product needs to evolve.

During this phase, we’ll track key performance metrics to assess whether Local Transcribe is making a meaningful difference, including the time officers spend on case notes and how backlogs change in practice.

We will begin by working with a small group of partner councils helping us refine Local Transcribe and understand how it delivers value in different services and settings.

As we learn from this early access phase, our ambition is to make the tool available to around 1,000 users across at least 12 councils by the end of the financial year. The insights gained will help us shape the product and identify the greatest opportunities for impact.

Looking further ahead, we believe Local Transcribe has the potential to become a shared capability for local government. Subject to successful delivery and impact evaluation, we aim to open up Local Transcribe to all English councils who want to use it for housing services as part of a public beta, with the earliest opportunity to start wider enrolment being from Spring next year. We also plan to expand in other frontline service areas across 2027.

Get involved

If you work in local government, there are two ways to get involved:

If you have a public sector email address, you're welcome to attend our monthly show and tells. We share what we've learned, what we've built, and what's coming next. Contact LocalAI@communities.gov.uk if you want to sign up for the show and tells.

We're also looking for partner councils for our private beta. We're particularly keen to hear from councils that would help us cover a good range of geographies, regional dialects, and council sizes to ensure Local Transcribe works for all councils.

Get in touch by emailing LocalAI@communities.gov.uk.

Find out more about Local AI and read about our work.

https://mhclgdigital.blog.gov.uk/2026/07/23/building-local-transcribe-for-local-government/

seen at 09:37, 23 July in MHCLG Digital.