Nottinghamshire County Council

The situation

Nottinghamshire County Council, as an upper-tier local authority, operates across multiple service lines and multiple physical locations. The council provides services that touch nearly every resident. That means printers, scanners and mail systems spread across dozens of buildings, serving social care teams, planners, administrators and caseworkers.

By 2015, the council’s leadership recognised a trend: the public sector was moving toward integrated service delivery. Individual councils and NHS trusts were forming Integrated Care Systems to share infrastructure and reduce duplication. But sharing meant standardisation. A council in one part of the region needed to print exactly as another council did. The technology had to work the same way if you were in Nottingham or at the periphery of the health board area.

The council needed a technology partner who could build a service wrap around scan, copy, print and mail functions. This service wrap had to work across multiple organisations, across all participating organisations, not only within Nottinghamshire. It had to meet Central Government Technology Code of Practice requirements. And it had to be deployed by a partner who understood both local authority constraints and wider public sector standards.

What SCC did

SCC took on the challenge of designing an integrated print and scanning solution that could scale across organisational boundaries. The starting point was understanding Nottinghamshire’s current estate: what printers existed, how they were used, what workflows depended on them and which could be consolidated or modernised.

Rather than replace everything at once, SCC worked with the council to phase the rollout. Early phases focused on consolidating devices and moving toward managed print services where the council paid based on usage rather than maintaining devices independently. Later phases involved integrating scanning workflows so that documents didn’t need to be printed and re-scanned, but could flow digitally between systems.

The Technology Code of Practice requirement shaped the architecture. This wasn’t just about making printing work. It was about building a solution that other councils and trusts in the integrated care system could adopt, adapt and trust. SCC designed for replicability from the start.

What changed

Nottinghamshire moved from owning and managing print hardware to managing print as a service. That shift freed internal IT teams to focus on applications and data rather than toner supplies and printer servicing. The council also gained flexibility. As services changed, remote working increased, offices relocated, new teams formed, the print infrastructure could adjust without major capital investment.

Integrated Care Systems could now share infrastructure. That meant councils and trusts across a region could standardise on the same scanning workflows, the same print policies and the same mail handling. The efficiency gain wasn’t dramatic on a per-organisation basis, but across a system with dozens of organisations, it was substantial.

What the client learned

Nottinghamshire learned that infrastructure modernisation and service integration are linked. You can’t move toward integrated care without integrated infrastructure. The council also learned the value of building solutions that other organisations can adopt. By standardising their approach, they weren’t just improving their own efficiency. They were enabling the broader public sector shift toward Integrated Care Systems.