Derby City Council AI Transformation Showcase: Their Journey to £7.5M Savings
- ICS AI
- 15 hours ago
- 7 min read
Derby City Council, in partnership with ICS.AI, recently hosted a comprehensive showcase detailing their pioneering AI transformation journey that has identified £7.5 million in savings. This exclusive event brought together key stakeholders from across the council to share insights into their strategic approach, implementation challenges, and remarkable achievements in deploying AI across multiple service areas.
With a huge 971 registrations from 421 individual organisations, this event became our largest showcase to date and the 2nd biggest gathering of local government leaders in the UK this year - demonstrating the immense interest in Derby’s whole-council approach to AI transformation.
In this extended blog post, we provide a detailed summary of this information-rich session – while it's longer than our typical posts, the breadth of insights and transformative results shared during the two-hour showcase warrant comprehensive coverage.
The Power of Unified AI Transformation
Martin Neale, CEO of ICS.AI, set the stage by emphasising the transformative potential of a unified AI approach. He explained how Derby's success stems from eliminating the complexity of managing multiple single-purpose AI solutions and instead adopting a comprehensive "AI for All" strategy through the SMART: Unified AI Platform.
This platform provides a single, integrated solution supporting every council use case and user type – from citizen-facing services to staff productivity tools and process automation. By taking this approach, Derby has avoided the common pitfall of creating a patchwork of vendor systems, delivering both enhanced services and significant cost savings.
Bold Leadership and Strategic Vision
Martin Ferguson from Socitm highlighted the importance of partnerships and innovation in the public sector. He emphasised how Derby City Council's AI implementation aligns perfectly with Socitm's Digital Trends 2025 report focusing on reimagining services, harnessing data, and responsibly leveraging artificial intelligence.
Councillor Hardyal Dhindsa, Derby's Cabinet Member for Digital Organisational Transformation, explained the political motivation behind the AI initiative:
"Like all local authorities, we were facing reduced funds from central government, which means reducing resources and cuts in services. We needed something innovative, something which was a game changer."
Rather than pursuing isolated pilot projects, Derby took a "roots and all, hearts and minds approach" to implementing AI solutions across the entire council. This bold, comprehensive strategy set Derby apart from other local authorities.
Executive Leadership: Championing Transformation
Paul Simpson, Chief Executive of Derby City Council, emphasised how AI offered a genuine opportunity for transformation beyond the overused buzzword. He noted that Derby's rich history as a city of innovation made it the perfect place to pioneer council-wide AI implementation.
"AI has a real opportunity to deliver genuine transformation because it's about real deep-seated change and doing something fundamentally different," Simpson explained. He highlighted the importance of top-down leadership, with the project being "led from the top" to drive adoption throughout the organisation.
Simpson also discussed how future local government reorganisation presents opportunities to design services with AI as the starting point rather than retrofitting technology to existing processes.
The Technical Foundation: A Unified Strategic Plan
Andy Brammall, Director of Digital and Physical Infrastructure and Customer Engagement, walked through Derby's unified strategic approach and implementation roadmap. The council conducted 44 workshops across all departments, identifying 261 potential AI opportunities that were refined into 54 focused use cases with clear implementation costs and savings.
The transformation roadmap began with the successful deployment of Darcie and Ali (Derby's Digital Helpers) in 2023, which exceeded expectations by achieving more than double the target deflection rates. The roadmap then expanded into phase one, focusing on debt management, staff productivity tools, and adult social care, with plans in place for phase two with more advanced agentic AI implementations.
Brammall also provided a financial breakdown of the £7.5 million in identified savings:
Adult Social Care: Target of £6 million through reduced care costs, increased income contributions, and reduced administrative burden (£2m achieved to date)
Income and Debt Management: £900,000 through increased recovery rates and reduced write-offs
Front Door AI (Darcie): £1 million through reduced customer service capacity needs
Staff Copilot: £2.8 million in productivity savings and efficiencies
Children's Services: £1 million target for education, health, and care plans
Systematic Capturing of Financial Benefits
Janice Hadfield, Head of Finance, explained how Derby systematically tracks and verifies the financial benefits. She highlighted the comprehensive process of identifying budgets with increased demand and financial pressures, focusing on areas with higher levels of manual and repetitive tasks.
"We then looked at the prioritisation of those areas that had the largest financial benefits and worked with ICS.AI colleagues to verify the cost benefits and provide reassurance to our senior leaders of the potential financial benefits that we could realise," Hadfield noted.
As the program evolved, Derby and ICS.AI remained committed to reprioritising work streams to maximise benefits as new technology emerged. Hadfield's team is tracking financial benefits against the baseline established at the start of the program through unit cost analysis and reduction of financial pressures.
Transforming Customer Service with AI
Jane Witherow, Head of Customer Engagement and Registration Services, shared impressive results from their digital assistant Darcie, particularly after upgrading to generative AI in May:
56% of calls resolved without advisor intervention
50% reduction in call wait times
85% reduction in calls to the switchboard
77% satisfaction rate from web users
Witherow emphasised that out of 2.2 million conversations managed by Darcie, they've received only 50 formal complaints in two years.
The showcase featured testimonials from Derby residents, including Ron, an older resident who found Darcie "very easy to use," and twins Alex and Sam, two young disabled citizens who praised how Darcy simplified accessing information about adult services.
AI in Social Care: Human-Centered Innovation
Andrew Appleyard, Director of Adult Social Care, explained how AI is helping address backlogs in safeguarding referrals, annual reviews, and care assessments while demand increases and case complexity grows.
"For Derby and for adult social care, there will always be a human in the loop. AI will not be making decisions. It will be staff looking at the recommendations of artificial intelligence and saying 'I agree with that, that's the approach that I want to take,'" Appleyard emphasised.
The technology helps reduce administrative burdens, allowing social workers to focus on direct interaction with clients. SMART: Notes, demonstrated by external consultant Donna Dean and Sam Spencer from ICS.AI, showed how AI can transcribe and organise information from client conversations, automatically mapping it to Care Act assessment domains and generating appropriate communications.
Staff Productivity: “Perrie” the Staff Copilot
Lauren Stephenson-Mabb, Digital Development Manager, presented Perrie, the internal staff Copilot named after Derby's Peregrine Falcons. Built on the SMART: Staff Copilot platform, Perrie provides secure, compliant access to AI tools that aim to boost resource efficiency by 40%.
Staff testimonials highlighted how Perrie has transformed their work, from supporting award nominations to generating strategic ideas and breaking complex tasks into manageable chunks. One staff member noted, "I believe it probably saves me an hour a day."
Future enhancements include document upload capabilities, role-based permissions, multilingual support, and system integrations, all designed to make the tool even more useful to staff across the council.
Debt Management: Data-Driven Decision Making
Amanda Verran, Head of Business Support and Debt Management showcased their new debt management dashboard, which provides a holistic view of outstanding payments across multiple systems. This AI-powered solution enables Derby to:
Visualise debt across council tax, business rates, sundry debt, housing benefit, and home care
Drill down to individual postcodes and households
Make strategic, ethical decisions about debt recovery approaches
Target resources efficiently to maximise recovery
Verran emphasised that the next phase will develop the dashboard into "something that is completely usable for us in terms of our strategic approach," including debt categorisation, interest calculations, and bad debt provision automation.
Information Governance, Security and Ethics
Lee Haynes, Head of Digital Enablement and Automation, explained Derby's robust governance framework for AI implementation. As early adopters without established best practices to follow, Derby created their own AI compliance board chaired by their Director of Legal. Key principles include:
Always having a human in the loop
Creating an overarching AI Technology Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA)
Developing subset DPIAs for every project or use case
Conducting reviews at multiple stages: planning, user acceptance testing, and pre-go-live
Maintaining a full version-controlled audit trail
The Path Forward: A £5M Savings Guarantee
Building on Derby's success, ICS.AI announced a £5 million savings guarantee for qualifying councils that adopt their SMART: AI unified platform. Andrew Smith from ICS.AI explained that the guarantee is based on implementing AI across all use cases likely to drive value using their unified platform approach.
"This allows other councils to replicate what Derby has achieved without the risk and in a fraction of the time," Smith noted, adding that the guarantee is scaled proportionally to council size, with smaller councils seeing around £3 million in guaranteed savings and larger authorities up to £20 million.
Participant Reactions: Inspiration for the Sector
The showcase received enthusiastic feedback from participants across local government:
“Fantastic session, very informative and lots to think about in terms of our own digital transformation journey”
“It’s one thing having a few use cases here and there – but the sum of everything here (in a co-ordinated way) is fantastic work. I’m sure a lot of effort from a lot of people – but great to see local public sector pushing the envelope!”
One participant summed up the impact perfectly:
"I'm already an extensive user of AI, but this presentation has still blown me away as to the possibilities of integration into local authorities. Congrats to Derby and ICS.AI. You make it look like real magic".
Key Takeaways from Derby's AI Transformation
Comprehensive, council-wide approach: Rather than isolated pilots, Derby implemented AI strategically across departments
Strong leadership support: Executive and political buy-in was crucial for driving adoption
Unified platform strategy: Using a single, integrated platform rather than multiple point solutions
Ethical implementation: Robust governance frameworks ensure responsible AI use
Focus on augmentation, not replacement: AI supports human staff, freeing them for complex, high-value work
Systematic financial tracking: Rigorous verification of savings against established baselines
User-centred design: Both resident and staff perspectives shaped the solutions
Conclusion: Setting the Standard for Public Sector AI
Derby City Council's AI transformation journey represents a landmark achievement in public sector innovation. By implementing a unified, council-wide AI strategy, they've demonstrated how local authorities can harness cutting-edge technology to improve service delivery while achieving significant financial savings.
As Paul Simpson noted, the journey is ongoing, with opportunities to design future services with AI as a foundational element rather than an add-on. The £7.5 million in identified savings is just the beginning of what promises to be a transformative approach to public service delivery.
Want to learn more about Derby's AI transformation journey?
Download the full recording to access detailed presentations from all speakers, including live demonstrations of Derby's AI solutions and comprehensive insights into their implementation strategy.
Interested in exploring how your council could achieve similar results? Contact the ICS.AI team to learn about their £5 million savings guarantee and how you can "Do a Derby" at your organisation.
