The AI questions for your next board meeting.

Six questions for the boards of local authorities, with the regulators and duties they answer to. Table it, ask each question, and note which answers your organisation could evidence today.

The six questions.

1. For each AI tool affecting residents, can we show how the Public Sector Equality Duty was discharged, with documented due regard and a check for bias against protected groups, and is it recorded in ATRS form?
2. Where AI informs benefits, social care or casework, is there genuinely meaningful human involvement, and can a resident be told a decision was made, make representations and contest it as the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 requires?
3. Which AI tools are procured from suppliers, and can we inspect, explain and stand behind their decisions in court, or have we outsourced accountability we cannot recover?
4. Have we completed DPIAs for tools using sensitive social care, safeguarding and special category data, and is any of that data leaving our control into third-party or generative AI systems?
5. Who at member level owns AI risk, and do our scrutiny and audit committees have the literacy and assurance to challenge these systems rather than relying on officers and suppliers?
6. If an automated tool made a wrong or discriminatory decision about a vulnerable resident tomorrow, how would we detect it, who would be accountable, and how would we defend it to the public, the EHRC and a court?

What your board answers to.

• Equality Act 2010: Public Sector Equality Duty

  Section 149 requires councils to evidence due regard to eliminating discrimination, so any AI in casework or eligibility must be shown not to embed bias or the decision is unlawful.

• Algorithmic Transparency Recording Standard (ATRS)

  The cross-government standard expects public bodies to publish records of the algorithmic tools affecting residents, a board-level transparency duty for any AI touching the public.

• Information Commissioner's Office (ICO)

  Under UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018, the council is data controller for lawfulness, DPIAs, fairness and the right to human review of automated decisions.

• Data (Use and Access) Act 2025

  Its provisions on solely automated decision-making require information, representations, human intervention and a route to contest before deploying automated decision-making in benefits or social care.

• Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC)

  The statutory equality regulator can investigate and enforce where AI-driven services discriminate, and councils must apply the PSED to AI in essential services.

Want to know how your board would answer before the meeting? The Board AI Scorecard scores the five areas these questions test, in about two minutes.