Challenge 1: London Borough of Lambeth

Michael Barrett:
It's Challenge One and we're in London at the London Borough of Lambeth.

It's really brilliant to be here. This council is full of ambition and innovation for its communities and that's really reflected in the challenge that they've set to our contestants.

Cllr Fred Cowell:
Lambeth is a wonderfully diverse borough. Over 130 languages are spoken. We are the home of Black Britain. We also too have pockets of deprivation in Lambeth but we're also very proud alongside this of having the youngest boroughs in London and also to the borough that has the largest LGBT community. So like all councils we're under extraordinary financial pressures at the moment. We've chosen deliberately to look at artificial intelligence and how it can help reshape council services. Our approach to AI is human-centred, we very much want our residents to be at the heart of this.

Ian Davis:
AI is rapidly changing the way we work and learn and live. It presents a huge opportunity for the council to improve the way we deliver services and deliver great outcomes for our residents. Ultimately we're hoping to create a model for how local councils can embrace AI in a way that is both ethical and equitable. If we get this right in Lambeth it could provide a blueprint for other councils facing similar challenges across the country.

Michael Barrett:
The challenges are run across two days and it's a pretty busy agenda where both teams will be meeting a whole range of stakeholders from departments from across the council and that's an opportunity for them to learn more about this challenge, find out what's going on locally and hopefully inform some of their choices in terms of what they'll feedback tomorrow on day two.

Virginia Ponton:
The contestants are going to get a lot out of this challenge because they'll learn about different service areas, they'll also learn about a lot of innovation and problem solving so it's those kind of competencies that they'll develop on this particular challenge at Lambeth. For the council, this challenge is all about getting fresh ideas and
perspectives from a diverse range of officers from across the country in different roles and it really energises councils around a particular topic so they have lots of staff involved in this challenge.

Tara Hudson:
I signed up to the LG Challenge because I really wanted to learn from my fellow council officers across the country and go and visit councils all over the place to just see what they were doing well and bring that back to my own council. I also wanted that opportunity to offer other councils some fresh ideas and show what we're doing well in my council in Lewisham with them to help them improve their services for residents. It is almost like a consultancy, something that a council would pay a lot of money for but run by council officers for council officers and sometimes you just need a fresh pair of eyes on a problem to find the solution.

Harry Giles:
There's a lot of information but really interesting. You get a really good bird's eye view of the whole of a topic for a council, you get to speak to a lot of different people and try and kind of draw a common thread amongst all of it. I think personally I've always had an interest in this kind of area. I think being able to take on new technology and use it to better people's lives in local government is why I went into local government. I think just the opportunity to be exposed to both different organisations and different types of organisations all across the country but also just being able to see the different ways of working. I mean things like this like being able to speak to exec directors, you don't get the opportunity to do that very often. I think being able to have that influence is really empowering.

Tara Hudson:
It also shows you what council officers can do in a day and a half. We've done a whole transformation plan but in my experience would have taken weeks. And I'm like, you know what, just get 10 people and give them the time and opportunity to make mistakes and they can really solve a problem quickly.

Sydney Alexander:
Because we put in so much, it is a lot of time they speak to a lot of people, it means we get really curated ideas for the very small time they're here. The presentations were both really strong, we were really impressed with what they pulled together in only a day and a half and in the end it kind of ended up that one team clearly had a real strong strategic background, the other team had a bit more of a technical standing, they had some really strong concrete innovative ideas but in the end we felt like that first team had a better response to the question so they just tipped it.

Tara Hudson:
Oh it feels so great and that it was really great as a team to get this success together today. It's great to have made an impression on the officers here at Lambeth Council because you know they provided us with that information and it was great for us to like take that away, get a fresh pair of eyes on it and then present back to them.

Harry Giles:
It was really good, it was really intense, we really enjoyed it but ultimately we all went into it knowing that we didn't care if we won or lost because we knew that we'd come up with some really good ideas, they're going to take some of them away and we all learned so much, we got on really well as well.