Lancashire County Council: Using AI to reduce administrative time in social care

The problem

Social workers in Lancashire's Adult Services write detailed assessments as part of their work with residents. One of the most time-consuming tasks is a social circumstance report, a structured document that outlines a person's living situation and support network. Producing one involves meeting the person, speaking to their relatives and the professionals involved in their care, and writing up the findings in a structured format.

The meetings and conversations are the core of the work. But the writing that follows, organising the information into the right structure, formatting it correctly, making sure nothing is missing, could take a social worker up to two days per report. For a team producing around 60 of these each month, that volume of drafting was pulling practitioners away from direct contact with the residents they support. Emma Burt, a Mental Health Social Care Lead in Adult Services, described the administrative burden as "the equivalent of the workload of two full-time social workers every month."

The challenge was not unique to report writing. Across Adult Services, as well as Education and Children's Services, staff were spending significant time on routine administrative tasks, from drafting shift schedules to writing up notes from regular one-to-one supervision meetings between managers and their teams to tracking how budgets were being spent across different areas. Each task was manageable on its own, but collectively they were absorbing time that could have been spent on the work that requires professional judegment and human contact.

The solution

The council's Digital Innovation team worked with Microsoft to train staff in Adult Services and Education and Children's Services to use Microsoft 365 Copilot. The tool takes a set of simple written instructions and generates a first draft of a document. For social circumstance reports, that draft is then checked and amended by the social worker, who still meets with the person involved and speaks to relatives as part of the process. Brett Aspden, a Mental Health Social Care Lead in Adult Services, described Copilot as "a great place to start" that "puts the information into the right format," with the social worker then verifying and including "details about the person and any professionals they have spoken to." The social worker remains responsible for the submitted report.

More than 1,400 social workers, educational psychologists, and support officers across the Adult Services and Education and Children's Services have been trained to use the tool.

The impact

1. Report drafting time fell to around three to four hours

Social circumstance reports that previously took a social worker up to two days to complete can now be completed in three to four hours. The hours no longer spent on formatting and structuring drafts are hours available to directly engage with the people they work with. Councillor David Dwyer reflected on how the tool was a "strong starting point and removes unnecessary bureaucracy, which means better use of public money, more efficient services and, most importantly, more time with residents." The council estimates the tool will save more than 200,000 staff hours per year, covering routine administrative tasks across both Adult Services and Education and Children's Services.

2. Staff began applying the tool beyond report writing

Teams are also using Copilot to produce shift schedules, record supervision meetings without anyone stepping out of the conversation to take notes, and analyse spending patterns across service areas to identify where local provision may need attention.

Lessons learned

• The professional remained accountable for the finished assessment. Copilot generated a first draft in the correct structure, but the work still rested on the social worker, who met the resident, consulted their relatives, checked the draft against what they had learned, and stayed accountable for what was submitted. For high-stakes or sensitive documents, letting the tool prepare a draft while the practitioner confirms and owns the result allows a service to capture time savings while keeping judegment and responsibility with a person.

• The tool handled the writing, while the judegment remained with the social worker. What Copilot handled was the drafting and formatting, the routine layer that had been drawing practitioners away from the people they support. The interviews, the conversations, and the assessment itself stayed with the social worker. The council presented the payoff as less administrative overhead and more time with residents. For a service weighing a similar move, drawing a clear line between the administrative burden and the professional core is what makes this kind of assistance safe to introduce.

• The software was off-the-shelf; the effort went into the rollout. Microsoft 365 Copilot is a commercial product the council licensed, so what distinguished this was the implementation: the in-house Digital Innovation team working alongside Microsoft, more than 1,400 staff trained, and prompts written to turn a short instruction into a structured draft. Once equipped, staff carried the same tool into other routine jobs, using it to capture supervision meetings and review budget spending. For another authority, the transferable part is the training and the prompt design for particular document types, more than the tool, which any organisation can license.

Launch year: 2026

This case study was written with assistance from artificial intelligence.