Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs: Artificial Intelligence

In the last 12 months, Defra has explored the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) across a range of areas to improve delivery of public services, strengthen resilience, and support innovation. AI has been deployed in habitat maps, such as Living England, and peatland restoration projects, such as AI4Peat, to enhance biodiversity monitoring, and in the Environment Agency’s FloodAI trial to improve flood forecasting, strengthen early warning systems, and protect critical infrastructure.

Before any application is deployed, the department considers data and security protection risks to ensure AI is applied responsibly. Guidance on the safe, effective, and responsible adoption of AI can be found in the Government’s AI Playbook.

The department also acknowledges the mandatory obligation under the Algorithmic Transparency Recording Standard (ATRS) to report where algorithms are used in decision-making. As of September 2025, Defra has published several ATRS records, including Local Authority Waste Collection Cost Groupings, Hello Lamp Post, and Living England, covering algorithmic tools in environmental protection and public engagement.

The department is also piloting the use of artificial intelligence to analyse open sources online for emerging civil contingencies risks and issues.

Internally, the department has piloted AI-powered tools to automate the migration of legacy IT systems to modern cloud environments and rolled out Microsoft Copilot Chat to streamline day-to-day tasks, improve productivity, and support staff in working more efficiently.