AI that serves 350,000 residents — in their own language.
Live deployment across five service portals. 40+ languages. One platform.
£127,000
contract value
350,000+
residents
5
service portals
The London Borough of Newham is live with GovAI across five resident-facing service portals: Money, Work, Youth, Business & Enterprise, and Learning & Skills. Residents get AI-powered navigation in 40+ languages; staff get the same intelligence in WordPress admin. This case study outlines the challenge, the solution, and what it means for other councils.
The Challenge
Newham is one of the most diverse boroughs in the UK, with the highest proportion of non-English speakers. The existing ournewham.org offered valuable content but lacked a true digital front door: residents had to know which service area to look in, and language barriers made self-service difficult.
The ambition was clear: a single, intelligent entry point across Money, Work, Youth, Business & Enterprise, and Learning & Skills — so residents could describe their situation in plain language (in any of 40+ languages) and be guided to the right help.
The Solution
- •WordPress with Beaver Builder, 60+ modular components
- •AI triage across 50+ intents in 5 service domains
- •DeepL API for 40+ languages
- •Hanlon CRM integration
- •Custom auth (5 user roles)
- •WCAG 2.2 AA
- •Cloudflare Enterprise, AES-256, OWASP Top 10
- •Safeguarding: distress detection, escalation, immutable audit logs
Target Outcomes
35%
target Tier 1 contact centre deflection
55%+
target resident engagement rate
15%
target increase in job applications
73%
time saving on business registration
800
youth sign-ups Year 1
40%
target increase in course discovery
40+
languages
Live KPI tracking in progress. Full results available Q3 2026.
Notify me when results are published
“Let's not be fearful of AI but let's command it for our future.”— Mayor Rokhsana Fiaz, London Borough of Newham
Architecture
Residents
Staff
What This Means for Other Councils
Four architectural decisions make the Newham build white-label ready for other councils:
- WordPress Multisite — Each council can have its own site with shared core and branded content.
- Configuration-based content — Service catalogues and intents are driven by config, not hard-coded.
- AI backend abstraction (ChatService interface) — The same front-end can talk to different AI backends or models.
- Structured intent namespacing — Intents are organised by domain (e.g. money, work, youth) so scaling to new services is predictable.
Is your council next?
See GovAI in action. Book a demo or download the case study.