The increasing use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in generating complaints is making it more challenging for Kingston upon Thames Council to uphold its code of conduct for councillors, a recent audit committee meeting heard.
Victoria Sathan, Director of Governance and Law and Monitoring Officer, reported that 29 complaints were received under the Members' Code of Conduct during the 2025-26 year, an increase from the previous year. Of these, 12 originated from the same individual, and a notable rise in complaints generated by AI was observed.
Ms. Sathan explained that AI-generated complaints can be more difficult to decipher, as they may not be expressed in the complainant's own language, creating a barrier to understanding the core issue. This is a corporate problem in terms of complaints in general,
she noted. The council has suspicions that they might, had AI insistence in drafting that, some of them not. It's a real mixture of what we're perceiving.
AI can also be used to formulate complaints in a way that frames them as broader governance issues rather than specific conduct matters, moving the tone more towards, uh, lethal government issue, jail, the ones we're in, traditional view against the council.
Despite these challenges, the council's Audit, Governance and Standards Committee was informed that 28 of the 29 complaints were rejected at the preliminary stage or resolved informally. Only one complaint proceeded to a hearing of the Standards Subcommittee.
The council is keeping an eye on
the increase in AI-generated complaints and is looking at how we address that, uh, to make sure people, grant them all raise the claim, write and raise them, get the assistance that they may need, uh, good technology to do so, but make sure we get the balance that that's not used in a way that actually is going to be a powerful now before we don't support them.
Discussions are held as complaints are received, and the format is reviewed to try and get the details of that.
The current Members' Code of Conduct follows the model LGA Code of Conduct and is not being amended until the national code is updated. Ms. Sathan stated, I wouldn't suggest that we update on Code of Conduct until that national one is updated.
However, the council is looking at reforms coming on governance in terms of members' conduct and standards ratio, that's all going through at the moment. So what comes out of that, we'll be looking at certainly our arrangements for team complaints and looking at if there's any members of the Code of Conduct as well.
The committee also discussed the correlation between election seasons and an increase in complaints, with Ms. Sathan confirming a cyclical pattern, particularly concerning member-to-member complaints during campaigning periods.
Further details on the committee's discussions can be found in the Public reports pack for the meeting held on Wednesday, 24 June 2026. The Agenda frontsheet was also available.
