United KingdomPublic sector2026 – ongoing

Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

Ask the toolkit AI guidance assistant

Defra opened its AI guidance assistant after testing met 4 of 6 pass marks

In progressCompany's own claimOfficial ↗

Problem

People struggled to find the relevant rule in Defra's AI guidance or understand how it applied.

Approach

Defra built a public assistant using Claude Sonnet 4.6 through Amazon Bedrock. It sent the toolkit guidance with each question and returned answers with source links. The service opened on 27 October 2026, with no usage data available at publication.

Results

4 of the 6pass marks met in October 2026 testing using an AI judge, according to DefraCompany's own claim[1]

Takeaway

Testing still found weaknesses in grounding answers and quoting expected rules. Defra also cautioned that its AI judge's assessments were imperfect.

Sources

DEFRA: Ask the toolkit
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs27 Oct 2026Company publication

Source summaries

[1]Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs27 Oct 2026

Defra documented the public beta and its restricted guidance-based answers. October testing met 4 of 6 pass marks, while grounding and expected-rule quotation remained below their thresholds.

Full details are in the original sources.

Added 1 Nov 2026 · Updated 1 Nov 2026