Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government: Artificial Intelligence
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what training his Department provides on AI; and (a) how many hours and (b) what topics and skills are covered by such training.
Answered by Samantha Dixon
The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government provides a programme of artificial intelligence (AI) training and capability-building activities for staff, relating to the use of Microsoft Copilot, which is available to all staff. This includes classroom-style training, webinars, workshops, practical exercises, team teach-ins, specialist agent-building sessions, and one-to-one support.
Since January 2026, the Department has delivered 91.5 hours of centrally provided training for courses of a known duration, and approximately 24.25 hours of additional engagement. In addition, the Department has funded training courses for specific user groups focusing on core AI usage skills, but information on these is not recorded centrally and could only be collated at disproportionate cost.
Centrally provided training delivered during the period reviewed covered the following topics and skills:
Training area | Topics and skills covered |
Copilot for Beginners | Introduction to Microsoft 365 Copilot, prompt writing, productivity use cases and responsible use of AI. |
Prompting Skills | Effective prompt writing, prompt engineering techniques and practical exercises. |
Teams and Facilitator | AI-supported meetings, meeting summaries, and action tracking. |
Document Drafting | Creating first drafts, content generation and document improvement. |
Meeting Magic | Using Copilot to make meetings more accessible and to help create meeting summaries and structured meeting minutes in line with best practice. |
Excel and Data Analysis | Data interrogation, analysis and insight generation using Copilot in Excel. |
Accessible and Inclusive Content | Producing accessible content, alternative text and inclusive communications. |
Brand and Communications | Producing on-brand communications and presentations using AI. |
Agent Building and Copilot Studio | Building AI agents, agent design, retrieval-based agents, task-based agents, topics, entities, tools and AI Builder capabilities. |
Team Teach-ins and Awaydays | Tailored sessions for individual business areas covering practical AI use cases relevant to their work. |
One-to-One Support | Individual coaching and troubleshooting support for staff using AI tools. |
Responsible AI | Self-paced, tool-agnostic learning that helps colleagues use AI responsibly, confidently and in line with the Government's 10 Principles for AI. |
Verbatim has judged this answer against the question that was actually asked — answered, partly answered, or evaded. Sign in to see the verdict →