The UK government loves a good AI strategy. There’s the “AI Playbook for the UK Government,” the “AI Opportunities Action Plan,” and endless white papers about making Britain a global AI leader. But here’s the problem: most of these grand ambitions forget that the actual work happens at the local level.

A new piece from Browne Jacobson law firm makes something that’s been obvious to anyone who’s actually worked in public services: Britain’s AI future depends on councils, mayoral combined authorities, and local planning officers — not Westminster bureaucrats.

The Local Reality

The government’s plan for “AI Growth Zones” to accelerate data centre construction sounds great on paper. But the hurdles aren’t in Whitehall — they’re in local planning departments, in communities worried about power consumption, in councils trying to balance economic development with local concerns.

As the analysis notes, local authorities control devolved skills budgets, which means they’re responsible for upskilling workers in AI and associated roles. They’re key stakeholders in the UK’s 12 freeports. They have the local knowledge that Whitehall simply doesn’t.

The planning officers who approve (or reject) data centre applications? They’re not reading the AI Opportunities Action Plan. They’re dealing with local concerns, planning regulations, and community buy-in. Developments that are locally led, aligned to placemaking strategies, and integrated with plans to boost local economies are more likely to succeed. That’s just reality.

The Data Problem

With the public sector employing about 18% of the UK’s total workforce and directly engaging with every citizen, there’s huge untapped potential in the data held across local and central government, education, and the NHS.

The government’s ambition to create a “National Data Library” sounds promising, but Britain’s track record on data collection is abysmal. We have historically been terrible at collecting and analysing data consistently. The January guidance on making government datasets ready for AI is a start, but it’s nowhere near enough.

The commercial worth of existing and future datasets must be recognised from the outset. This isn’t just about efficiency — it’s about securing assets and finding appropriate opportunities for public sector revenue generation.

Walking the Regulatory Tightrope

With the EU AI Act taking a safety-first approach and the US going dogmatically pro-innovation, there’s a genuine opportunity for the UK to lead in responsible AI policy adoption — if it can successfully walk this regulatory tightrope.

But that requires all parts of the public sector to develop sophisticated risk management capabilities. Using AI for identifying potholes and school lesson planning has lower hazard risk than detecting cancer, but the greater opportunity likely lies in disease diagnosis and prevention. Sometimes AI choices need to be made not because they’re easy, but because they’re hard.

A recent mishap involving West Midlands Police and AI-generated false intelligence illustrates why this matters. Poor AI decisions don’t just cause immediate problems — they undermine trust in institutions and the technology itself. And trust is essential as AI use expands.

What This Means

The UK isn’t going to become a global AI leader through top-down strategies alone. It needs to get serious about devolution, empower local authorities with the resources and expertise they need, and actually coordinate data across the public sector.

The interesting twist: AI itself might help with some of this. A collaboration called Waves — involving Google, Demos, New Local, Camden Council, and South Staffordshire District Council — is testing how AI can make it easier for residents to have a say in tackling contentious local issues. By speedily identifying areas of consensus and where difficult issues remain, the project aims to improve engagement and trust in local institutions via mass deliberative democracy.

The irony is delicious: AI could be the tool that helps build consensus around delivering its own infrastructure.