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United Kingdom

AI and Automated Decision‑Making in UK Public Administration: Data Protection, Equality, Human Rights, FOI and Judicial Review—Legal Frameworks, Key Cases and Practical Governance Steps

Practice notes
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Artificial intelligence (AI) and automated decision-making (ADM) augment or substitute for human decision-makers in UK public administration. Examples include police use of live facial-recognition cameras, automated computations of social security entitlements, predictive environmental modelling, and algorithms proposing planning or licensing outcomes. UK government guidance treats ADM broadly, encompassing both fully automated outputs and tools that support human judgement. The legal principles set out in this Note bite even where a person ostensibly signs off the decision but substantially depends on an AI-derived score or recommendation. These technologies may deliver efficiency yet can trigger legal or comparably weighty consequences for individuals. The UK General Data Protection Regulation, Assimilated Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (UK GDPR), the Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA 2018), the Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA 1998) and the Equality Act 2010 (EqA 2010) impose requirements to ensure automated decisions are lawful, fair and transparent. Public authorities are constrained by common-law administrative obligations, including the need for lawful power, procedural fairness and rationality, as well as freedom of information law. This Practice Note outlines the law and policy on ADM in the public sector, provides an overview of traditional judicial review grounds relevant to AI-assisted decisions and suggests practical steps for...

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Erica Stanford
Erica Stanford

CMS

Erica Stanford is a digital asset, fintech and AI specialist at CMS UK where she consults in a non-legal capacity. She is an industry expert on fraud and fraud prevention and speaks and writes globally about digital assets, digital crime, scams and the integration of AI. She is the author of the bestselling book Crypto Wars: Faked Deaths, Missing Billions and Industry Disruption, which was awarded 'Highly Commended' in the Business Book Awards. She is also author of Risks Relating to Crypto and Digital Assets in 'Crypto and Digital Assets Law and Regulation, Sweet & Maxwell, 2024, An Outline of Scams and Crime in Crypto (chapter 2) in Nick Furneaux's investigative textbook There's no Such Thing as Crypto Crime, as well as Ethical AI and co-author of AI laws and regulation in AI, Machine Learning & Big Data 2024, GLI. ...

Web page updated on 22/05/2026

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