The Local Government Association’s Transformation Capability Framework identifies Service Design and Innovation as a core skill area for modern councils, emphasising user research, accessibility, and experience design as essential to effective transformation.
For many councils, the business challenge lies in balancing efficiency with accessibility. UX offers a low-cost, high-impact route to redesign services around real user needs - reducing support costs, improving satisfaction, and building lasting in-house expertise.
This blog explores what that looks like in practice: how User Experience (UX) principles can help councils design better services, improve resident satisfaction, and build in-house capability through structured learning such as the University of Cumbria’s new fully online Digital UX Apprenticeship.
When residents think about local councils, the first images that come to mind are often potholes, bins, planning notices, and complex online forms. For most people, their main experience of local government is now a digital one: the website they pay council tax through, the portal for school applications, or the chatbot that tries to redirect them through a maze of pages. Every click, delay, or dead end becomes part of the public’s perception of their council.
Behind these interfaces are dedicated teams working to deliver vital services while managing legacy systems, tight budgets, and growing public expectations. In this space, User Experience Design (UX) is not about decoration or aesthetics. It is about access, empathy, and trust.
The Public Sector’s UX Moment
Across the UK, councils are tackling the same challenge: how to meet rising citizen expectations while working with ageing infrastructure and limited resources. The pandemic accelerated a digital shift that was already under way. Planning consultations, benefits claims, and permit applications that once relied on paper forms and in-person queues have moved online.
The Government Digital Service (GDS) has helped to establish a culture of good design with principles such as start with user needs, make things simple, and iterate often. Yet for many local authorities, embedding this thinking across teams is still a work in progress.
UX design helps bridge that gap. It begins by observing how real people interact with services, not how systems expect them to behave. It maps the true journey from a user’s perspective, highlighting confusion, frustration, and moments of satisfaction. From there, services can be redesigned to make them more intuitive, inclusive, and human.
What Good UX Looks Like in a Council Context
Take the example of a parking permit application. The older version might have required residents to scan documents, upload proofs of address, and wait for confirmation by post. A UX-informed redesign could:
- pre-fill known details from existing council databases
- automatically verify identity through GOV.UK One Login
- include a visual tracker showing progress, such as “Application received”, “In review”, and “Approved”
The difference is not just convenience. It is transparency and equity. Good UX reduces calls to helplines, increases completion rates, and builds trust among residents who might otherwise feel excluded or overwhelmed.
Councils such as Camden, Stockport, and Leeds have already shown how user-centred design can streamline local services. Smaller authorities can follow suit without major expense. Sometimes all it takes is observing how real users navigate a form, mapping a service with sticky notes, or training staff to view their own systems through a resident’s eyes.
While integration levels differ across authorities, these kinds of incremental improvements are increasingly within reach and often requiring only process redesign rather than major new systems.
Accessibility: A Legal Duty and a Moral Imperative
Councils also carry a legal responsibility under the Equality Act 2010 to make digital services accessible to everyone. Accessibility is more than just screen reader compatibility or font size. It means designing experiences that work for people with cognitive differences, limited literacy, or unreliable internet connections.
A UX approach integrates accessibility from the outset, not as a checklist but as a way of thinking. That includes writing in plain English, designing clear navigation, and offering multiple ways to complete key tasks.
As Samantha Jones, Digital Transformation Lead at a northern district council, explains: “When we test our services with residents who struggle most, we uncover the barriers that affect everyone. Accessibility makes services better for all users, not just some.”
The Hidden Efficiency Dividend
There is also a strong business case. Every time a resident gets stuck and phones the council, the cost of that call eats into limited (PAYG) budgets. Every incomplete online form creates more work for staff. By redesigning services through a UX lens, those inefficiencies can be reduced significantly.
One Midlands authority, for example, simplified its housing application process after conducting user research. Within six months, abandoned applications fell by 40 percent, even though the back-end system remained the same. The improvement came entirely from clarity and communication.
This is the essence of real-world UX: making the invisible work better.
The Human Side of Digital Transformation
It is easy to view digital transformation as a technology problem. In reality, it is a people problem. Software can automate processes, but empathy must be designed into every interaction.
UX encourages collaboration between departments that rarely speak to each other, such as IT, communications, and customer service. It turns policies into lived experiences that work for residents. It also reminds staff that they are users too, every time they log in to an internal system or navigate the council intranet.
This blend of technical understanding and human insight connects strongly with what I have elsewhere called Ambient UX, the idea that user experience extends beyond the screen. It includes physical spaces like reception desks, signage, phone scripts, and even the tone of an email. For councils, every touchpoint is part of the resident experience.
Building UX Capability from Within
Not every council can afford a dedicated UX team, but many are discovering that they already have staff with the right mindset. The next step is giving those individuals structured training and a professional route into digital design and service thinking.
That is where the Digital UX Apprenticeship can make a real difference. Apprentices gain hands-on skills in user research, prototyping, accessibility testing, and experience design while applying these directly in the workplace. Councils benefit from new insight, practical design thinking, and a fresh perspective on public service delivery.
The Call to Action
The Digital UX Apprenticeship at the University of Cumbria is delivered fully online, meaning councils and employers anywhere in the UK can develop in-house design capability and grow their own UX specialists. Apprentices learn how to make digital services simpler, more inclusive, and more effective for every user, every time.
For councils looking to improve resident satisfaction, efficiency, and accessibility, investing in UX is not just about digital improvement. It is about designing public services that work for everyone.
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