We have written it for the councils and organisations who use our service, and for their IT, data protection and procurement teams.

We know many councils are still building their own AI policies, and that you need to understand how your suppliers use AI before you can sign yours off. This policy gives you that information in one place. If you need anything in a different format for your records, contact us using the details in section 9.

1. What this policy covers

AdviceAid is the homelessness-prevention service provided by Neatlines Ltd. It includes Compose, the tool your team uses to write advice content, and SelfServ, the public self-service advice tool.

This policy covers three things:

  • How we use AI to run our business.

  • How we use AI to help develop advice content.

  • Our plans for AI features inside the AdviceAid product.

Where we say "AI" in this policy, we mean tools that generate or analyse text, such as large language models. Where we say "we", "us" or "our", we mean Neatlines Ltd.

2. Our principles for using AI

We apply the same principles wherever we use AI. They follow the approach the UK government sets out for the public sector in its AI Playbook, and the expectations of the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO).

  • People stay in charge. A person is responsible for any work AI helps with. AI supports our team. It does not make decisions on its own.

  • We use AI lawfully and responsibly. We comply with UK data protection law, including the UK GDPR, the Data Protection Act 2018 and the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025.

  • We protect your data. We do not put your confidential information or personal data into public AI tools. Section 5 explains how we handle data.

  • We check AI's work. AI can produce confident answers that are wrong. We treat anything it produces as a draft. A person always checks it before we use it.

  • We are open about it. This policy sets out where we use AI. We will tell you before we add AI to the product you use.

  • We keep it under review. A named owner reviews this policy and our AI practices. Section 8 explains how.

3. How we use AI to run our business

We use mainstream AI tools to help with everyday business tasks, in the same way many organisations do. For example, we use them to help with administration, drafting internal documents, marketing, and software development.

This use does not involve your data. It supports how we run Neatlines Ltd as a company. A member of staff is responsible for checking and approving anything produced this way.

4. How we use AI to help develop advice content

This is the area councils ask us about most, so we explain it in full.

Our advice content is written and owned by people. AI plays a limited, supporting role within a process that a qualified person leads from start to finish. Every piece of advice content goes through a multi-stage process with people in control at each stage:

  • A person decides the content is needed and sets its scope.

  • A person produces the outline and the draft.

  • A person edits the content.

  • A person carries out a final review before anything is published.

  • We run quality assurance checks as part of this process.

Within that process, we use AI for two narrow purposes:

  • To support research tasks, such as helping us find and organise information that a person then checks against trusted sources.

  • To support readability, spelling and grammar, so the advice is clear and easy to understand.

We do not let AI write advice that goes out to the public without a qualified person checking it. AI does not have the final say on any advice content. The accuracy of our advice is the responsibility of our team.

5. How we protect your data when we use AI

Protecting your data is central to how we use AI.

  • We do not put council data, resident data or other confidential information into public or consumer AI tools.

  • We do not allow your data to be used to train AI models.

  • We use data minimisation. Our advice tools are built to hold as little personal data as possible. Compose holds your team's names and email addresses, and the advice content they write. It does not hold resident case data.

  • Your AdviceAid data stays in the UK. The application is hosted in the Microsoft Azure UK region. Our use of AI does not change where your data is stored.

These commitments sit alongside the controls in our Privacy Policy and our security and procurement documentation, which your IT team can request.

6. AI features inside the AdviceAid product

We want to be clear about the current position and our plans, because we know this matters for your own risk assessments.

There is no AI built into the AdviceAid tools you use today. Compose and SelfServ do not use AI to generate advice or to make decisions.

We are developing AI features for future versions of the product. These features are in testing and are not yet available to customers. We are designing them to support people who give and receive advice, with a person kept in control.

Before we release any AI feature into the live product, we will:

  • Update this policy to explain what the feature does and how it works.

  • Tell affected customers in advance.

  • Complete the checks UK data protection law requires, including a data protection impact assessment where one is needed, so you have what you need for your own records.

  • Be transparent with residents where AI is used in a service they receive.

You will have the information you need to assess any AI feature before it reaches the people you support.

7. How this fits with your own AI governance

We have written this policy to help you meet your own duties.

  • It supports the data protection impact assessment (DPIA) your team may carry out for AI.

  • It reflects the UK government's AI Playbook for the public sector and the ICO's guidance on AI and data protection.

  • It gives you the supplier information you need if you choose to record your use of algorithmic tools. One way to do this is the government's Algorithmic Transparency Recording Standard. This standard is recommended for local government in England, though not currently mandatory.

If your procurement or DPIA process needs answers in a particular format, we are happy to help. Contact us using the details in section 9.

8. Keeping this policy up to date

We review this policy regularly. We update it whenever our use of AI changes, when we add AI features to the product, or when the law or official guidance changes.

A named member of our team owns this policy and is responsible for keeping our AI practices in line with it.

9. Contact us

If you have questions about how we use AI, contact us:

Neatlines Ltd Kon Tiki, 2 Frithfield Walk Shepton Mallet, Somerset BA4 5LY, United Kingdom

Website: www.adviceaid.uk Email: support@adviceaid.uk