Enabling delivery: supporting Thurrock’s digital ambitions

Thurrock Council is a large local council located in Essex, a county in the East of England. The Council has around 2,500 employees and is responsible for providing essential services to nearly 180,000 residents. The Council is managing financial challenges and taking steps toward financial stability.

In 2022 the Council issued a Section 114 notice, declaring itself in financial distress. The Council is undergoing a period of rapid digital change in response to financial pressures and higher expectations from residents for how they engage with services. It is adopting and applying new digital tools, technologies and infrastructures designed to bring efficiencies and improve interactions between residents and the Council.

In late 2024 Thurrock Council engaged Public Digital at the start of their digital transformation journey. We were commissioned to conduct a Digital & IT Team review to support the delivery of Council priorities through the digital change programme. Over a rapid 2-month engagement, we:

• Worked openly and collaboratively with digital and IT leadership and teams

• Interviewed senior and political leaders from across the Council

• Conducted in-depth documentary analysis

• Delivered actionable recommendations through an interim and final report.

Our work took place alongside existing complex changes driven by the significant budgetary pressures and the announcement of big changes to local government structures just as the engagement began. The focus of the Council’s Corporate Plan was to restore financial stability and enable the council to focus on delivering high quality services for residents. Existing organisational capacity for digital transformation was constrained and the capabilities to deliver the strategy were missing.

We deployed a small, specialist team of expert practitioners with deep experience working as digital transformation leaders within other local government organisations. We worked side-by-side with Council employees and digital leaders to understand their priorities, challenges and ensure their voices were heard. We role modelled desired behaviours and working practices by sharing insights frequently and challenging established norms. We focussed on the digital and IT function but also examined the broader operating environment to understand the wider conditions for success

Within 10 weeks, our team conducted in-depth interviews with employees at every level of the Council, facilitated workshops and analysed key council documents. These enabled us to generate early actionable insights which we shared through an Interim Report. We used feedback on this Interim Report to test the picture we were forming, share initial thoughts on a potential new operating model, diagnose the gap between the starting point and ambitions, and develop a ‘now, next, and later’ roadmap outlining actions to support the development and implementation of the IT redesign. We also delivered costed options for the new digital and IT service alongside a re-usable cost modelling tool enabling the Council to complete their own commercial modelling exercises.

We brought together our observations and insights with clear recommendations into a Final Report. This was shared with the Council in March 2025 and endorsed by the Chief Digital Officer, Marta Pocztowska.

The support we have provided has built the capabilities of senior digital leaders within the organisation. Our recommendations and roadmap mean the Council is in a stronger position to achieve their ambitions.