AI is now the intermediary between council and residents
I am currently on an interim assignment as Head of Strategic Communications and Engagement at Brighton and Hove City Council. This blog is written in my own capacity and reflects only my personal views.
Six weeks into a new role, the change I see as having the greatest impact on how communications is delivered is about how people reach the council, and what they already believe when they do.
Most of my experience in recent years has been advising complex organisations operating in highly regulated and highly scrutinised sectors on communications under pressure. It helped my return to local government as many of the issues I face feel similar. But what I didn’t expect was the scale of the shift in where residents get their information from and what they expect when they hear from the council.
Increasingly, people engage with council communications already informed, or already misinformed, by something the organisation did not publish. They’ve read a NextDoor post, a neighbourhood WhatsApp thread, or an AI overview. SparkToro's 2026 analysis found that fewer than one in three Google searches now ends with a click to any website. Where AI Overviews appear, they reduce click-through by close to 60%.
AI has become an intermediary between the council and the resident, summarising, ranking and presenting information on the council's behalf. The risk is clear. In January 2026, AI-generated misinformation about City of York Council copied official account branding and made false claims about council spending. The council confirmed the posts were fake but not before they’d been shared and reshared with hundreds of thousands of followers to become part of the online record.
Communications teams used to distribute information through outputs such as a press release, website update or social post to people looking for it, whether journalists, community groups, or residents. Now, before anything is issued, more work has to be done assessing what information is already circulating, whether it’s grounded in truth, then determining when and how to engage according to which channel will have the greatest impact. It demands a shift from communications being about single outputs to being delivered as a system, underpinned by the council's verified and accurate digital record.
AI is transformational, with particular impact on how we use, create and share information. In local government, we need to consider both the risk it presents and the opportunity for recognition of communications as a strategic enabler of service delivery and resident outcomes.
Natalie Orringe
Strategy+Impact
