A supplementary edition of nations and regions news, which appears in Socitm’s annual magazine, In Our View, with recent stories from Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland and every region of England.
Scotland
South Lanarkshire Council has become the latest Scottish local authority to scale back its use of social media service X, following a motion backed by a majority of councillors to stop using it for non-urgent public engagement.
Wales
Monmouthshire County Council is using assistive and smart technology to help people with restricted mobility continue to live in their own homes, including by fitting lights and automated curtains controlled by smart speaker.
Northern Ireland
Lisburn and Castlereagh City Council has run its first gamified essential learning programme which uses games in a non-classroom environment to help residents improve numeracy and literacy.
Republic of Ireland
Dublin City Council and Trinity College Dublin have opened a local government generative AI lab that will investigate how councils can use the technology in administration, customer service, councillor support and data analysis.
North-east England
Middlesbrough Council is revamping library IT areas at its community hubs, with the latest at Thorntree allowing people to plug in and charge their own devices, larger screens, self-service tablets, loanable laptops and better Wi-Fi.
Yorkshire and the Humber
Sheffield City Council plans to procure a strategic partner as part of a new commissioning strategy for its technology enabled care service, which would widen this from supporting at-home telecare to other services.
North-west England
Liverpool City Council plans to appoint four core technology suppliers to provide the council and local schools with hardware, software and support over four years through a framework deal worth up to £30 million.
East Midlands
Nottingham City Council was hit by a power failure at its main offices, affecting Wi-Fi, phone lines, some online services and payment systems, the last leading it to take cash payments only for birth and death registrations.
West Midlands
West Midlands Combined Authority has started publishing online data on air quality in near to real time through use of air sensors outside schools, business, hospitals, sports centres and in residential areas.
East of England
Hertfordshire County Council has been trialling laser technology mounted on the roof rack of a vehicle which is designed to spot areas of road that could benefit from preventative road maintenance work.
South-east England
Surrey County Council has worked with seven local Instagram influencers to promote the government-funded Multiply programme, which offers free numeracy training, before it closes at the end of March.
South-west England
Dorset Council has seen more than 16,000 unpaid carers creating self-help plans through its online support platform Bridgit, with nearly 700 also signing up for bespoke email-based support.
London
Hillingdon Council has launched an artificial intelligence-based customer service system which can deal with web and telephone queries in multiple languages, with the council aiming to automate most of its business processes.
For links to press release pages of local authorities in the UK, Republic of Ireland and Crown Dependencies, view Socitm’s local authority press release directory.