October 9, 2026
It’s been an incredible 24 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, the BTMS team has delivered £1.7m in annual financial savings, thanks in part to a new Search by Goods Movement Record (GMR) feature that has removed the need for complex data-sharing agreements, giving staff the ability to work independently and check data records instantly.
Additionally, our CCTS (cross-cutting technical services) platforms team has rationalised environments and decommissioned the Azure Delivery Platform, saving over £360k in costs per year to run the platform. This is in addition to wider infrastructure savings of over £300k per year on Defra platforms that are surplus to requirements.
The 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:
These achievements are closely tied to Defra’s strategic goals, which include reducing costs through standardisation, increasing the pace of change, ensuring high quality delivery while improving transparency, and strengthening the work environment for civil servants.
Equal Experts brings a different kind of partnership – one rooted in honesty, pragmatism and a belief in the importance of doing the right thing even if it’s not in our short-term interest. For example we have turned down work when we could demonstrate that what was being asked for would not provide value for Defra.
When we identified that Defra had commissioned multiple teams to develop parallel solutions for the Future Grants and Future RPS services, we proposed a unified, strategic architecture using reusable components to support a broader range of grant applications.
We delivered the first iterations of the platform in close partnership with DDTS and the RPA. The first grant schemes are now live in private beta, which reduces duplication while enhancing operational flexibility and control.
According to one senior stakeholder, the RPA are experiencing significant resource savings based on early indications of processing standard times compared to the current system.
Across the AD3 engagement, our team has taken on some of Defra’s highest-stakes and most 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). Removing on-site dependencies on Border Control Points has generated time savings that are equivalent to a cost reduction of £1.7m annually, thanks to the ability to reprioritise and adopt new tasks.
We have stabilised the Import Notifications Service and eliminated database performance risks, with more frequent issue-free releases (11 in the past 6 months compared to 6 in the previous 12 months). Backend performance has significantly improved with query times coming down from 35 minutes to just seconds, leading to a more stable and safer service.
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 inspired what has become the Defra AI Service manual. This manual owned by CCTS, makes it easier to find, share and use best practice around AI innovation. It is now being used by multiple teams (not just EE) across Defra to accelerate the adoption of AI tools and practices and to speed up 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 a productivity gain, and also a step change in how the government can work.
We were 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. On EPR we have safeguarded data integrity to assure c.£1.5bn of liability notices are handled effectively. During the peak period in 2025, there was a backlog of more than 800 notices during the peak submission period; leading to weekend working and reduced confidence in the service. This figure fell to just three in April 2026 after we had taken on the service fully from December 2025.
Things haven’t always gone well and when we have dropped the ball we have owned it. Which is why partnering with Defra is so important so we can have those tough conversations.
In one such case, we really came together working closely with Defra teams and adopted a ‘war room’ approach, and leveraged AI to accelerate a delayed forecast delivery by two months in the waste reprocessing and exporting service, enabling the £600 million annual trading window to open for the recycling industry. We put £364k of our investment into the AI war room approach to get the service back on track. This is in addition to the £466k of the Statement of Work that we did not invoice for due to errors that we made in delivery.
The feedback from Defra has been overwhelmingly positive. Josh Nearney, former Service Owner for Digital Waste Tracking, said that getting DWT Receipt of Waste from inception to live in public beta in just 14 months was particularly impressive:
“The individuals behind that work deserve the credit. Your professionalism, technical capability, pragmatism and commitment have been clear throughout, particularly when the programme was under pressure. Because of all of the work, DWT is now live, contributing directly to reducing waste crime and supporting the wider DDTS digital strategy.”
Janet Hughes, the former director of FCP, also 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 24 months of leaving the campsite better than we found it.
Adam Strickland has over 25 years of experience in technology, working across both public and private sector organisations. With a background in software engineering, he brings a strong technical foundation and a practical understanding of how technology can solve complex business challenges.
Having previously worked across the Defence and Health sectors, Adam has spent the past two and a half years supporting Defra. Today, his focus is on consultancy, building strong client relationships and helping Equal Experts deliver meaningful, lasting value through technology.
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.
