March 26, 2026
It’s been an incredible 18 months for the whole Defra engagement team. The time has flown by, but we’ve all achieved so much together.
From day one, our goal hasn’t been to ‘deliver a contract’. It’s been to help Defra rethink how digital transformation happens – building trust, empowering teams, and leaving every part of the organisation stronger than we found it.
For starters, our platforms team has rationalised environments working across multiple delivery groups to save more than £75,000 per month on infrastructure costs alone – with seven-figure savings coming soon!
A central principle of our work at Defra is simple: a small team of experienced practitioners can achieve more, faster, than a large, traditional consulting model.
The data from AD3 tells its own story – we’ve been able to dramatically reduce headcount while actually delivering better services:
Equal Experts brings a different kind of partnership, one rooted in honesty, pragmatism and challenge when it adds value.
A standout example of this is when we advised Defra against buying an off-the-shelf solution to replace the Future Grants and Future RPS Service we advocated for a smaller, bespoke system that was cheaper and did what the users needed. Defra listened, and we built it (and it has just gone live into private beta!!). That kind of honesty builds serious trust.
What does that trust look like in practice? The Vets Visit service built such strong relationships with our delivery teams that Equal Experts was asked to be involved while policy was still being formed for the next stage of work, on endemic diseases. That’s a huge testament to the team.
Across the AD3 engagement, our team has taken on some of Defra’s highest-stakes, deeply technical challenges.
The Trade team helped Defra to replace a 15-year-old legacy AVLS system to the new BTMS (Borders and Trade Matching Service) platform. The new system is incident free and 1,000 times faster than AVLS, with one user saying, “I reckon it’ll save me at least an hour each shift!”
By August 2025, BTMS was automating 99.49% of customs declarations, driving huge efficiency gains.
We also redesigned data structures to address a bottleneck in the Borders Data Analytical Platform – reducing a three hour process to just three minutes (a 99% reduction).
Recently IPAFFS has been in a state where new releases were effectively impossible. It took us four months to update and stabilise the platform and return the system to a state where improvements can be made.
Alongside the infrastructure work, we’ve helped Defra to become a leader in responsible innovation. We’re putting AI into practice to solve specific, significant problems. Our AI Playbook captures best practice around AI innovation, making it easier to find, share and use best practice. This is now being used actively by multiple teams across Defra to accelerate the adoption of AI tools and practices as well as speed up actual digital delivery.
We also helped the Circular Economy team reduce the time taken to prepare responses to Parliamentary Questions (PQs) from two days to just ten minutes. The team created an Agentic AI POC solution that was tested against human drafts – and the results showed that AI was as good as (or better than) a human 90% of the time.
That’s not just a productivity gain – it is a step change in how the government can work.
We were also a partner in a Joint Value Initiative (JVI) that produced research showing the potential value of Defra’s Greener Service Principles on sustainability. We’re helping provide the data to support Defra’s mission to improve and protect our environment and to use technology in an environmentally responsible way.
When it comes to Digital Waste Tracking, we’re helping Defra turn the service around, so that external software developers can start integrating with this service, which addresses the £1 billion annual cost of digital waste crime. We’re also helping Defra to transform Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) services, holding more producers accountable for waste.
The feedback from Defra has been overwhelmingly positive.
Janet Hughes, the director of FCP, recently said: “I’m blown away by the level of thought leadership, innovation, ways of working and playfulness that Equal Experts has brought to Defra.”
As we move into the next phase, we’re determined to stay ‘playful’ – it means we’re engaged and bringing positive energy to tough challenges.
Here’s to the next 18 months of leaving the campsite better than we found it.
All business models have their pros and cons. But, when you consider the type of problems we help our clients to solve at Equal Experts, it’s worth thinking about the level of experience and the best consultancy approach to solve them.
If you’d like to find out more about working with us – get in touch. We’d love to hear from you.
