Not every LGR story starts on vesting day. Some of the most useful groundwork happens well before it.
Mole Valley and Tandridge District Councils share a licensing resource, with officers covering both authorities from two offices around 30 to 45 minutes apart. It works day to day, but covering leave, sickness and the December, January and March renewal peaks was genuinely difficult, because plate production and licence issuing were tied to specific people in specific places.
They moved to Direct Fulfilment and went live in under a week. Because the system is centrally hosted, any authorised officer can log in and process a renewal or issue a plate regardless of which office they're usually based in. Cover no longer depends on one person picking up another's workload from scratch.
Both authorities are now heading into the new East Surrey authority, and that shared, location-independent way of working is a considerably easier starting point than two separate in-house setups with their own equipment, stock and processes to reconcile.
Preparing before
reorganisation happens
When Stevenage Borough Council decided to look at how their taxi licensing fees and charges were structured, they found the process raised more questions than expected, including what it was actually costing them to fulfil licences in-house.
Like many councils, the team had absorbed the administrative burden quietly over the years. Officers were spending meaningful chunks of their working week on manual processes: producing plates, handling stock, managing turnaround. It worked, but it wasn't efficient, and with growing pressure to reduce operating costs, it wasn't sustainable either.
The decision to explore outsourced fulfilment wasn't taken lightly. Any change to a process this embedded in day-to-day operations comes with risk. Would costs increase during transition? Would drivers experience delays? Could the team manage the changeover alongside everything else they were already carrying?
The Challenge
The core problem wasn't a crisis, it was accumulated inefficiency. Officer time was being absorbed by licence production when it could have been directed elsewhere. Internal processes were manual, and during busy periods, turnaround times for drivers could stretch to three days or more, sometimes closer to a week.
There was also a financial dimension. The fee review opened up a broader question: where were the real costs sitting, and were there smarter ways to structure operations going forward? Outsourcing fulfilment wasn't a shortcut, it was a genuine operational decision aimed at freeing up resources and reducing the unit cost of licence production.
The transition itself was the biggest uncertainty. Moving from an established internal process to an external supplier always carries risk: timing, accuracy of templates, data handling, staff confidence. The team needed a quick turnaround without complication.
The Onboarding Experience
What surprised the team most was how fast it happened.
Implementations of this kind often take months, scoping meetings, back-and-forth on templates, testing phases. In this case, Stevenage Council was live within a matter of weeks. Templates were recreated quickly, the system was ready ahead of expectations, and the process of uploading licence information for print turned out to be far more straightforward than anticipated.
That confidence didn't come from nowhere. The working relationship with MOGO prior to go-live had been strong, responsive, clear, and practical. When the team did go live, they felt prepared. There were no last-minute surprises, no gaps in the process they hadn't planned for.
The Impact:
The most immediate difference was felt in officer workload. Time that had previously been spent on manual licence production was freed up. There were no backlogs to clear, no delays to manage. The transition was clean.
Turnaround times for drivers improved noticeably. What had previously taken between three days to a week during peak periods became a faster, more consistent process. The trade noticed, and for the most part, the feedback was positive.
There was one early issue worth noting. Drivers flagged that the font size on plates being sent out was too small. It was a reasonable concern, and it was handled without fuss: one email to MOGO, templates amended, corrected plates in production within days. That kind of response matters. Not because problems should be expected, but because how a supplier handles them tells you a lot about the working relationship.
Ongoing support since go-live has continued in the same vein, queries responded to quickly, issues resolved without needing to be escalated. For a licensing team managing a busy workload, that reliability is not a small thing.
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In Summary
The savings are real but measured in the right currency for a public sector team: officer time and internal resource, not just line-item costs.
Licence production that previously took up to a week during busy periods is now handled faster and without the internal overhead. Staff time has been reallocated to other priorities. The process runs with less friction.
For a team that went into this trying to reduce the cost of administering licences, not just the fee structure, that outcome is exactly what they were looking for.
Stevenage Borough Council came to MOGO with a clear operational problem and a reasonable amount of caution about making a change. What they found was a transition that was quicker and simpler than expected, a support team that stayed engaged after go-live, and a day-to-day process that works better for both officers and the trade they serve.
Let's Work Together
Have a question or want to learn more? Our team is here to help you find the right fulfilment model for your council.
