Unsearchable council records: Residents can't find what their council decided
Local government publishes its decisions (planning, licensing, budgets, minutes) and publishing is where the obligation stops. They arrive as scanned documents with inconsistent names, in systems searchable only if you already know what you are looking for. A decision that changes a street is technically public and practically private.
Framed by Ainna's innovation team
Who lives with it
Residents and neighbourhood groups · local reporters · small developers and community organisations
Why now
Local newsrooms have continued to close in many markets, removing the layer that used to read these documents on everyone else's behalf.
Why it matters
The information is already public, already funded and already digital. Making it findable is a data problem rather than a political one, which is why it is tractable, and why it keeps falling between mandates.
On the Index
Framed by Ainna's innovation team from a condition most readers will recognise, so no source is claimed, and published in Edition 1. How Problem Radar works
Work it through with Ainna and it is packaged as finished documents: a problem framing document and deck, a pitch deck, a PRD and more. See the document examples
Take it to a hackathon
Use it as a challenge statement: copy it as a brief with who it affects, why now and the evidence to start from, ready for your event page. More hackathon problem statements on the Index.
Cite it
“Residents can't find what their council decided.” Ainna Problem Radar, problem 0022, 21 September 2026. https://ainna.ai/problems/residents-cannot-find-what-their-council-decided
Problem Radar listens to public reporting, from institutions, research and the press, for problems worth solving, and frames each one to the same standard; Ainna's innovation team chooses and edits every problem before it goes on the Index. Every problem says where it came from, so the framing can be checked. Nothing on the Index comes from a user, and what you bring to Ainna is never published. How Problem Radar works.
Benefits, banking, health records and school places are moving to interfaces that begin by asking you to prove who you are online. Hundreds of millions of people cannot prove who they are at all, and billions more have no digital means of doing it, so each service added to the digital channel quietly removes itself from the people who most need it, while the statistics record improved efficiency.
"Accessible" on a listing might mean a ramp, or one step, or a lift that has been broken for a month, or a toilet being used as a storeroom. The most reliable account usually comes from another disabled person who has actually been there. That knowledge exists in enormous quantity, scattered across forums, group chats and reviews, and the maps and guides that gather it cover only part of it, each in its own terms, so it is rarely there to check before leaving the house.
Framed by Ainna editorial
Framed 21 Sep · High (Ainna's editorial grade)
For whomWheelchair users and people with limited mobility · blind, deaf and neurodivergent travellers and people with hidden disabilities · carers planning a trip · venues that are accessible and cannot prove it
Small firms are assessed on documents they were never required to produce. Audited accounts, filed returns and collateral registries are what credit models expect; a profitable shop with a phone, a supplier relationship and ten years of trading has none of them. The lender cannot see the business, so the business does not exist to the lender, and the money goes to whoever already had the paperwork.
