Client successes: Spring 2025

From bespoke to future-proof: Breckland transforms its website with the GOSS Dynamic Theme

Breckland Council has been a GOSS client since 2015, initially launching a bespoke corporate website built on the GOSS Digital Platform. While the custom design offered flexibility in the early stages, it became increasingly difficult and resource-intensive to maintain over time. Meeting accessibility requirements and keeping pace with evolving web standards placed growing demands on internal teams, making the bespoke approach less sustainable.

To overcome these challenges, the Council recently transitioned its main public website to the GOSS Dynamic Theme, a fully supported, accessibility-compliant website theme designed to offer a streamlined, user-friendly experience. Instead of updating their old templates, Breckland opted for a full migration to this modern theme. The move ensured alignment with current design best practices and significantly reduced ongoing maintenance efforts. Crucially, the Council was able to retain all existing content, URLs, and media from the previous site, enabling a smooth and seamless migration with no disruption to users.

This shift to the Dynamic Theme marks a significant milestone in Breckland's wider digital transformation journey. The new site provides a future-proof foundation for delivering high-quality online services, with staff and customer feedback since launch being overwhelmingly positive. The Council is now well-positioned to continue evolving its digital services with confidence and agility.

Joint digital solution transforms garden waste services across South Oxfordshire and Vale

Serving around 300,000 residents, South Oxfordshire and Vale of White Horse District Councils work closely together to deliver key services through a shared management team and joint service delivery arrangements. This collaboration covers a wide range of areas, including waste collection, planning, environmental health, and citizen services, allowing the Councils to streamline operations, reduce costs, and provide consistent, high-quality services across both districts. Ahead of the 2025/26 Garden Waste season, both councils aimed to replace their outdated permit system with a modern, digital-first approach.

As part of efforts to improve the garden waste subscription service, South Oxfordshire and Vale of White Horse District Councils sought to replace the complex direct debit payment system. The old system was difficult to manage and offered limited reporting, particularly around tracking subscriptions by property. In some cases, multiple payments were mistakenly set up for the same address over several months or years, with no clear way to identify valid subscriptions. This caused confusion, delays, and a poor citizen experience. It also forced staff to rely heavily on the finance system as the sole source of payment information, requiring extensive manual work. Overall, the process was inefficient and time-consuming, diverting valuable resources away from more impactful service improvements.

The councils saw this as an opportunity to fully modernise the process, improving efficiency, ensuring more accurate data, and ultimately boosting citizen satisfaction through clearer communication and faster, more reliable service delivery. The new system built using the GOSS Digital Platform, introduces annual renewals and encourages residents to sign up online, offering a simpler, more transparent experience for both citizens and staff. Working with GOSS, Permiserv, and BIFFA, the Councils launched a new, integrated garden waste subscription service in late February 2025. The GOSS Platform integrates with Permiserv to send permit data to Permiserv once payment is confirmed, enabling the production of garden waste bin permit stickers for residents. At the same time, authorised subscriptions are batched nightly and shared with BIFFA via CSV, ensuring waste collection teams have up-to-date information ahead of garden waste collection days.

This automated approach has significantly reduced manual tasks, improved data accuracy, and streamlined the overall process for residents and staff alike. After launch, over 37,000 subscriptions have been processed within the first 2 months. With 89% of residents now self-serving, the new service is already a major success. Planning is now underway for 2026/27 waste subscription renewals, with GOSS and South and Vale continuing to explore ways to drive even greater digital uptake.

Digitally powering sport and community engagement in Merton

The London Borough of Merton, home to over 220,000 residents across areas such as Wimbledon, Mitcham, and Morden, is working toward ambitious goals set out in its "Building a Better Merton Together" plan. This strategy focuses on creating a healthier, more inclusive, and better-connected borough by investing in local services, infrastructure, and community wellbeing. As part of this wider vision, Merton aims to become a 'Borough of Sport', a place where all residents, regardless of age or ability, have access to high-quality sporting opportunities that encourage active lifestyles and community engagement.

To help bring this vision to life, the council set out to modernise the online bookings facilities for Wimbledon Park Water Sports Centre, a key hub offering activities such as sailing, climbing, and archery. The aim, by upgrading the bookings system, would not only help improve operational efficiency for the authority, but also makes it easier for residents to discover and take part in local sport. By removing barriers to access and enhancing the citizen experience, the new system supports Merton's ambition to embed sport and physical activity into everyday life across the borough.

Faced with a tight deadline, Merton needed to move away from its outdated bookings system to a modern solution that was accessible, efficient, and capable of supporting a diverse range of courses and events. To deliver this transformation, the council chose GOSS Bookings. Its flexibility allowed Merton to introduce deposit payments for high-demand activities like sailing and climbing - enabling residents to secure spots in advance and helping to reduce no-shows. The new system also supported group and custom bookings, making it easier to cater to schools, clubs, and other specific group needs. Crucially, GOSS Bookings enabled the collection of essential participant data - including health conditions, emergency contacts, and parental consent for underage participants—ensuring the sports centre could operate safely, remain compliant with health and safety regulations, and provide evidence of that compliance when required.

In its first month, GOSS Bookings supported over 30 courses at the sports centre and generated more than £100,000 in bookings. As a result of this successful uptake of GOSS Bookings, Merton has also utilised the system to manage venue hire and room bookings at Vestry Hall and Canons House. With a successful launch, the team is now focused on scaling up and embedding the bookings system across other public services, reinforcing Merton's drive to promote active lifestyles and community engagement through digital innovation.

North East authorities collaborate to build safer communities online

The North East Public Protection Partnership (NEPPP) brings together 12 local authorities across the North East of England to collaborate on key regulatory services that protect public health, promote safety, and improve community well-being. With no existing website, NEPPP needed a central digital presence to clearly communicate its shared goals, highlight regional initiatives, and demonstrate the collective impact of its work.

In partnership with the 11 other North East local authorities, Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council was chosen to lead the project thanks to its strong digital infrastructure and central role within the NEPPP partnership. This leadership position allowed the project to progress efficiently, building on established systems and ensuring consistency across council websites. With many North East authorities already experienced in using the GOSS Digital Platform, and with Stockton's in-house expertise in website management, they were ideally positioned to develop and maintain the new NEPPP website. Furthermore, with the Platform's successful use by other North East councils such as Gateshead, Sunderland, Durham, and South Tyneside added extra reinforcement as the natural choice for delivering NEPPP's new digital presence.

Upon delivery, the NEPPP website delivers a unified, accessible platform designed to support environmental health, trading standards, licensing, and housing professionals across the North East. It enables them to share best practice, promote consistency, and communicate their work to residents, businesses, and stakeholders. Aimed at both professionals and the public, the site includes information about the partnership, its member authorities, and service areas. It also offers news, guidance, and case studies, helping professionals collaborate more effectively while making services clearer and more accessible for the wider community. From a citizen's perspective, the website serves as a one-stop hub for understanding how public protection services are delivered across the region. It provides clear, accessible information on issues like food safety, environmental health, and licensing, helping residents know where to go for support, how to report concerns, and what standards they can expect.

By choosing GOSS, NEPPP has gained a scalable, strategic platform that supports cross-authority collaboration while making vital public protection services more visible, transparent, and accessible to the people they serve.