A town council struggling to understand information provided by Cheshire East has been advised to use AI to decipher the data.
The “massive” spreadsheet, which contains more than 1,000 lines of data listing money planned for infrastructure projects across the borough, was sent out to every ward councillor in October last year.
It contained the amount of section 106 money owed to the council by developers, and listed when the funds should have been received, the date by which they needed to be spent and which projects the money had been allocated to.
But since then, councillors have struggled to find the information they needed and Cheshire East has now followed up with instructions and contact details for officers who might be able to help them decipher the data.
As previously reported, Alsager Town Council was told in January that around £350,000 allocated to improving the Bank Corner junction in Alsager town centre was now “insufficient” to complete the works required, after it had been “sat on” for seven years.
As we reported last week, Congleton town councillor Robert Douglas, said he was “furious” after he spent “hours” trawling through data provided by Cheshire East, only for it to later say the information he had been given was “out of date”.
Coun Douglas had previously discovered that £800,000 of s106 money had been “permanently lost” after it went unclaimed by the authority from developer Stewart Milne, which went bust in January 2024.
Speaking during last Tuesday’s Planning and Environment Committee meeting of Alsager Town Council, clerk Julie Mason said she had not even attempted to follow the authority’s new guidelines on how to tackle the spreadsheet because it was such a “mammoth task”.
Alsager Ward Coun Rod Fletcher said he had emailed the council back straight after he received the spreadsheet in October.
He said: “I got this long, waffling email, and the data covered the whole of Cheshire East.
It wasn’t in any order and the same planning applications kept appearing multiple times.
“Some applications had been refused, like Hassall Road East. It was still on the list, but why? And it doesn’t say whether the money has been spent or not.
“I told them the information I asked for was not there. I got a promise that it would be updated, but I’m still waiting for it.”
Determined
But Coun Steve Butterfield was determined for the town council to find out the information.
He said: “This is so typical of the replies we always get from Cheshire East. This is such an important issue, and I don’t think we can put it off.
“We need to go through it line by line and work out exactly what is meant by it. I don’t think we should let them get away with saying the situation is fine. We should challenge them.”
Coun Reg Kain said: “You can upload the spreadsheet into an AI programme and tell it what you want to know, and it will do it for you.
“The information is in the public domain, isn’t it? Then shove it into an AI and it will give you suggestions on how to address things and explain everything you need.”
He explained that in his role as a teacher he encouraged his students to use the tool as a “free tutor”, and that he used it to mark work.
He said: “If you provide the upload criteria, it’s unbelievable what this stuff can do; it’s mind-blowing.
“We have dry-run it so many times, it’s scary. It will cut your workload ridiculously. If I get a set of scripts from year 11 students, I’m done for two or three nights. With this machine, I can do it in an hour or two.”
Coun Kain agreed to upload the spreadsheet into an AI programme on behalf of the town clerk to see if it could be used to retrieve the information needed on s106 money owed for projects in Alsager.
