Medway Council

Medway Council

Reimagining Local Government Through Resident-Centred Digital Transformation.

Medway Council website on a tablet

Public services reimagined

Medway Council, a unitary authority in the southeast of England, is at the forefront of digital transformation in UK local government.

They are reimagining public service delivery through their Medway 2.0 transformation programme, placing residents at the heart of how services are designed, built, and delivered.

Using the full Jadu Digital Platform, the council has created a scalable, low-code foundation for end-to-end digital services, with over 200 services already transformed. Medway had already utilised the full suite to enhance digital customer journeys, and once they had proven the concept that service redesign, coupled with low-code/no-code software, allowed them to develop scalable and flexible processes affordably. With the addition of the CRM, Jadu was chosen as the corporate form and CRM tool.

 

Stack of hardrives

The Challenge

In 2019, Medway’s digital estate was representative of a traditional council struggling under the weight of legacy systems. With 44 core IT systems in place and overlapping customer contact routes, the council was drowning in duplication, siloed workflows, and costly inefficiencies.

For citizens, reporting issues like abandoned vehicles or booking a waste visit often meant navigating complex, duplicated forms or contacting multiple teams.

For staff, confidence in systems had declined. Contact centre agents and service teams relied on manual processing, shared inboxes, spreadsheets, and phone calls to manage processes that needed digitising, resulting in bottlenecks, lost information, and inconsistent service.

Adding to the challenge was a previous transformation programme that prioritised short-term cost savings over long-term, sustainable service redesign. This resulted in headcount reductions, assuming that digital tools would follow, without sufficient investment in designing the systems to support them. This left many frontline staff with fewer resources and struggling under the weight of legacy CRMs and disconnected eForms platforms.

Recognising the limitations of its existing IT stack and the shifting expectations of residents, Medway took the bold step of reimagining the organisation from the ground up.

The Solution

Rather than pursuing a patchwork of updates to legacy technology, Medway decided to start over, from the ground up. The council committed to designing a digital-first authority around service design, human needs, and scalable platforms.

Medway’s digital leadership asked a transformative question: What if we could reimagine the council from scratch? That vision became Medway 2.0, a cross-council change programme to build a 21st-century authority.

Digital service delivery was consolidated around two core platforms: Microsoft Power Platform for internal automation and Jadu for customer-facing services, including Jadu Central and Jadu Connect, as the council migrated away from its legacy CRM. Early service redesigns focused on high-volume, high-pain areas such as nuisance vehicles, environmental reports, household waste booking, housing support, parking permits, adult social care notes, and FOI/complaints.

This focus allowed Medway to streamline its digital estate, simplify user journeys, and enable faster integrations. Over six months, the council rebuilt 29 forms and migrated 72 workflows into Jadu Connect, reducing duplication and saving £55,000 annually by retiring the old CRM. Every new or migrated service followed a structured service design approach. Common service patterns, such as reporting, triage, case investigation, and automated updates, were standardised across all areas.

Redesigning Nuisance Vehicles

The redesigned nuisance vehicles process encapsulates Medway’s new approach. Previously, residents faced multiple confusing entry points, and staff dealt with non-integrated forms, duplicate responses, and manual reviews, which cost hours of time and led to significant inefficiencies.

Now rebuilt on Jadu, the service starts with a single, user-friendly landing page. A boundary map enables users to view previously reported vehicles, thereby preventing duplicates. DVLA checks are automated via API, dynamic rules reduce unnecessary submissions, and automated emails keep residents informed.

The impact is a 75% reduction in manual officer workload for this process alone, faster response times for residents, and fewer invalid reports clogging the system.

 

   

medway council homepage on a tablet

The Results

Medway Council has transitioned from fragmented systems and siloed service delivery to a modern, user-first, scalable digital platform.


By leveraging the Jadu Digital Platform and focusing relentlessly on service design, the council has demonstrated that public sector transformation can be swift, cost-effective, and internally driven.

Instead, Medway has built a flexible, replicable model for digital government, where no-code platforms empower internal teams, AI supports smarter working, and services are continually iterated based on real resident needs.

However, the biggest win is cultural: the transformation has restored staff confidence, and teams now take ownership of their services. By consolidating platforms, standardising design patterns and building capabilities in-house, Medway Council has created a sustainable model for agile public service delivery.

Medway Council is no longer simply digitising its old ways of working. It's building a new kind of local authority that is inclusive, responsive and driven by citizen needs.

Download the full case study