We’re excited to announce our latest partnership with Matthew Middler and the South Gloucestershire registration team!
Home to around 300,000~ residents and on the doorstep of the Cotswolds, South Gloucestershire join nine of their neighbouring registration services in the south west in partnering with Stopford (with 70% of the region now partnering with Stopford).
With huge ambitions for the project, our new partnership aims to launch an array of tailored online booking flows to support their authority’s online ambitions, facilitate easier access to services for the public, and maximise time saving.
The Challenge
When Matthew Middler joined South Gloucestershire’s registration team as their new Superintendent Registrar in 2024, making more of the service digitalised was top of mind.
Having worked with Stopford during his time at Bath and North East Somerset and being part of the digitisation of the service there, he set out to deliver the same online and administrative benefits to South Gloucestershire.
Alongside maximising their use of a registration system to make tasks like sending reminders on ceremony fees automated, they also set out to expand on their online services; formerly having only births, birth re-registration and notices available online.
Ultimately, bringing in more online processes for areas like deaths and ceremonies, while also harnessing Agenda’s various email triggers, would save more time over the long term and achieve the council’s wider transformation goals.
The Solution
Starting the project in late July, we’ll collaborate with South Gloucestershire’s registrars to deliver online births, deaths (with MCCD Management), notices, ceremonies, payments and email integration over the course of our partnership.
Having been without a registrar-specific system for most of this year though, we’ve worked quickly to gather requirements and get work scheduled to deliver an initial phase as quickly as possible, focusing on a phase 1 approach of:
- A customised admin side complete with all standard and ‘other’ appointment types.
- Death registrations with built in MCCD/coroner document checking to ensure that bookings can go ahead successfully.
- Designated notices designed to factor in all evidence needed by the couple and highlight fees applicable.
- Email integration with the council’s provider.
This hopes to have a huge impact on the appointment types in question, with:
- Around 2,500~ death registrations occurring every year that can then be booked online (based on ONS statistics)
- Around 1,000~ marriage ceremonies taking place every year, of which notices can then be booked online (based on ONS statistics)
Special thanks to the registrars at South Gloucestershire for choosing to partner with us and we look forward to continuing collaborating on future phases.