Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick still has questions to answer over his role in a planning case involving a Tory donor, Sir Keir Starmer has said. The Labour leader told the BBC the matter was "far from closed" but stopped short of calling for the minister's resignation. Mr Jenrick is under fire after granting permission for a luxury housing development to donor Richard Desmond. Downing Street said the PM had full confidence in the minister. Mr Jenrick says he was motivated by a desire to see more homes built when he overruled government inspectors to give the green light to Mr Desmond's plans for a 1,500 home development at the former Westferry printing works, in London's Isle of Dogs.

In my previous blog post, I outlined the challenges faced by local authorities across the country to consistently deliver resident services amidst increasingly stringent budgetary cuts. In this post, I will propose some suggestions. Whilst it certainly will not undo the financial tight spot authorities find themselves in, I believe it will help alleviate funding pressures and, over time, bring costs down to a manageable level. Firstly, it is imperative to understand not just current resident needs, but future needs. Secondly, authorities collect data in abundance, and it is time to start using this data smartly. The introduction of analytics, machine learning and AI will equip authorities to find previously undetected insight from their data to improve decision making, in particular on which services to focus their attention.

In my previous blog post, I outlined the challenges faced by local authorities across the country to consistently deliver resident services amidst increasingly stringent budgetary cuts. In this post, I will propose some suggestions. Whilst it certainly will not undo the financial tight spot authorities find themselves in, I believe it will help alleviate funding pressures and, over time, bring costs down to a manageable level. Firstly, it is imperative to understand not just current resident needs, but future needs. Secondly, authorities collect data in abundance, and it is time to start using this data smartly. The introduction of analytics, machine learning and AI will equip authorities to find previously undetected insight from their data to improve decision making, in particular on which services to focus their attention.

Google sees local services as a path to peer-to-peer conversations to gain more data about people, places and things. Some think the company has added a social layer to local services like Google My Business and Google Maps. Blumenthal, the proprietor at Understanding Google My Business & Local Search, a blog that focuses on local and businesses, said it's all about the data. Focusing on local just gives them much more. To back his hypothesis, he points to some recent changes such as Google adding the ability for people to follow businesses on Maps, and giving businesses the ability to respond to followers with special deal.

Tim Gregson, chief technology officer, local and regional government, Microsoft, outlines how local organisations can use an AI based framework to add automated chat, voice, text conversations to local service transactions and queries from citizens. The framework is available, complete with AI learning, to integrate into current systems across multiple channels. To learn more about the framework and how it can be integrated into health and social care, click here. You can also read Tim's UKAuthority blog post here.

The average person uses 3–5 apps per day and the big app purge is coming… You know the day, you delete all of those apps that you don't use. In a really big way, apps have failed us and the reason is quite obvious: attention. Simply put, we humans do not have enough bandwidth to consume all of the great content available to us. We can not read all of the great books, watch all of the best movies, listen to every amazing song and utilize every piece of technology. To do so would be humanly impossible!