When digital services start with people Leeds City Council
Leeds City Council partnered with Fujitsu to make digital services easier to use—simplifying journeys so residents can find essential information faster, access services more easily, and benefit from a platform that evolves with their needs.
Challenges
A fragmented estate of 90+ sites left residents overwhelmed, with long contact center calls and unclear paths to urgent services when they needed help most.
Solutions
Fujitsu turned Leeds’ vision into people first digital journeys—using user research, agile co creation, and Local Gov Drupal to simplify access and modernize the platform.
Outcomes
- Significant savings from a standardized web estate
- Up to 70% reduction in delivery effort and team size
- Up to 75% increase in web user satisfaction scores
"The team from Fujitsu became almost a member of Team Leeds — it felt like we were all working for the same organization."
David Halligan, Chief Technology Officer, Leeds City Council
1,500
Pages migrated toLocalGov Drupal
- Industry: Public Sector
- Location: UK
- People: 14 000
About the customer
Leeds City Council is one of the UK’s largest local authorities, delivering services from housing and social care to education, transport, and cultural venues. Its digital teams support residents, businesses, and vulnerable citizens with a strong focus on accessibility, inclusion, and service quality.
Residents often look for support during stressful moments—whether seeking emergency housing, accessing adult safeguarding guidance, or navigating complex care needs. Leeds City Council and Fujitsu began by asking how digital services could help residents find the right help faster across any channel. That focus on resident journeys—clarity, inclusion, and speed to information guided every design and delivery decision.
From vision to delivery through user-centered design
To turn Leeds’ ambition into delivery, Fujitsu worked side by side with a 20 person, multi organization team—translating a shared vision into wireframes, design principles, and a clear information architecture for 1,500 migrated pages. Co-design sessions with frontline staff shaped structures and content, including early work on adult safeguarding journeys.
Prototypes and content patterns were validated with staff and residents to ensure each journey reflected real world needs. Using full agile delivery—sprint planning, show and tells, retrospectives, and automated deployments—the team made fast, evidence-based decisions. Discovery research, rapid prototyping, and accessibility by default practices established consistent journeys and a lightweight design system that aligned templates, taxonomy, and tone across services.
“The user experience design took the vision and the objectives of the program and turned it into an actionable map and plan,” explains David Halligan.
Practical improvements with real impact
The new platform lets residents find help faster. With 1,500 pages consolidated into clearer journeys, residents reach key information faster, and reorganized content makes information easier to locate—even for lifted and shifted pages. A small but powerful change—five-digit page codes—has shortened previously 35–40 minutes contact center calls significantly and reduces cognitive load by removing the need to spell long URLs, especially for neurodiverse residents.
By standardizing and consolidating the web estate, Leeds City Council has delivered significant immediate and ongoing savings, significantly reducing long-term reliance on external agencies. Reuse of standardized components and patterns has reduced delivery effort and team size by up to 70%, enabling faster and more consistent service delivery.
The cloud hosted Drupal platform reduces operational effort and supports sustainability goals as services move away from on premises SharePoint. Leeds also keeps all channels open—web, phone, and in person—ensuring WCAG2.2 AA level inclusive access across 40+ sites while the digital experience continues to improve. User satisfaction scores have improved by up to 75% across multiple service areas. With a flexible platform in place, the Council can continue evolving—from more personalized journeys to AI supported service discovery and transaction starts across the website, phone, kiosks, and community hubs—delivering a digital service designed around residents, not platforms. “Instead of reading really long URLs over the phone, every page now has afive-digit number,” notes David Halligan.
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