Posts about:
The IRRV Annual Conference 2026 once again brought together local government professionals, industry partners and innovators from across the sector in Telford. With this year's theme, Stronger Together: Collaboration for Better Public Services, the event provided the perfect backdrop for conversations about how councils are transforming services through technology, innovation and shared learning.
Automation has been on the local government agenda for years. Most councils are familiar with the term, and many believe they already understand what it means. But automation doesn’t mean the same thing to everyone – and that’s where expectations, ambition and outcomes can start to drift apart.
At Govtech, automation isn’t a destination or a one-off project. It’s a journey. One that progresses over time, deepens through partnership, and delivers more value as automation is continually refined and expanded.
Like many of you, we’ve not long returned from the IRRV Annual Conference and Exhibition 2025 and, once again, the event proved invaluable. As always, it’s the perfect opportunity to catch-up with so many of our customers, as well as meet new faces, and share automation stories about the real benefits and value our solutions are providing for councils all over the country.
Revenues and Benefits teams are facing constant pressure. Workload is rising while budgets tighten and the pressure to do more with less is relentless. The challenge is clear: how can Services break this cycle?
The answer is automation. Our customers have shown how automating routine processes creates valuable space for reallocating resources to higher-priority collection and intervention work.
In 2021, I found myself working in the world of Revenues and Benefits. Before then I didn’t give much thought to what was involved in Council Tax itself. Like many people, I just accepted it as a part of adult life – you get a bill once a year, and if you're like me, you set up a Direct Debit and forget about it.
Having not long returned from the IRRV Annual Conference 2024, always a firm favourite, it’s true when they say everything happens at once. Settle in there’s a lot to share, including: our highlights from the IRRV, welcoming SIX new customers to the webCAPTURE community, and celebrating our long-standing customers.
We’ve recently returned from the IRRV Spring Conference 2024 in Milton Keynes and the aptly named theme, 'Facing the Future: Planning for Change', created quite a buzz. We shared many conversations about what’s currently happening within the industry and how the need to be digitally inclusive is more important than ever. Workloads are increasing as budgets tighten, and the pressure to do more with what you have is relentless. But what can be done to break this cycle? Well, we were on hand to share how our customers have used automation to create ‘space’ for a reallocation of resources to their collection and intervention priorities.
As you may have heard we work a little differently here at Govtech. We like to become one with our customers, forming a partnership where we are seen as an extension of their team. Over the last few months, apart from the everyday automation routine, we’ve worked on other projects with new and existing customers to help them create even more success. Here are a couple of stories where we’ve been delighted to have helped been a part of.
There has never been a better time, or a greater need, for automation in Council Tax. The end of Covid relief schemes and subsequent cost of living pressures have created a huge collection and recovery challenge for local authorities. Faced with severe financial pressures, the loss of expertise, staffing shortfalls, recruitment difficulties and increasing workloads, many Revenues Services are struggling just to stand still. It’s no surprise that FOUR FIVE SEVEN MORE councils (we've had three more since we posted this blog six weeks ago) have chosen to modernise and speed up collection processes through Govtech automation.
Automation has been on the local government agenda for several years now and we all have a pretty good understanding of what it is. Or at least we believe we do. But does it have the same meaning to everyone?
I joined Govtech as their project manager almost 10 years ago. I had just completed 24 years of service for a large London Local Authority, and that was me done; I planned to put my work in Local Government firmly in the rear-view mirror. However, there was one company I felt compelled to say a personal goodbye to, and that was Govtech.
In the current economic climate, more pressure than ever before is being put onto Local Authorities to save money and resources and of course automation plays a big part in that.