Manchester City Council: A digital transformation putting teams first

The challenge

Manchester City Council (MCC) serves one of the UK's largest and most diverse urban populations. Residents and businesses expect to find what they need online, quickly, on any device – but for years, MCC's digital infrastructure made that harder than it should be.

Content teams had limited control. Publishing a page required navigating a rigid CMS, and new content had to be built in UAT, signed off, then rebuilt from scratch on the live site. Scheduled publishing was a challenge; there was no meaningful control over which pages appeared in search engines, and limited analytics to understand how residents were actually using the site.

At the same time, the website wasn't integrated with Verint – the CRM managing resident services and case workflows.

With its CMS contract up for renewal, MCC went to tender with clear priorities:

• Replace the legacy platform and give content teams genuine control and autonomy
• Embed reliable, non-cookie-dependent data insight
• Lay the foundations for future capabilities – including AI-powered governance and bespoke in-house microsites

MCC selected the Squiz Digital Experience Platform (DXP).

The solution

Before a single page was migrated, MCC undertook a major content audit across all 24,000 pages on manchester.gov.uk. The result: 1,857 pages and downloads removed (12.84% of total content), 157 consultation pages cut, and three legacy microsites consolidated into the main site. Discovery workshops and a full site crawl mapped every page type and matched them to components in the new platform, giving the project a clear blueprint before migration began.

Automated migration then moved more than 20,000 pages in batches. Years of content built by multiple contributors meant inconsistent markup throughout, so delivery took an iterative approach: migrate, test, fix, rerun – until the output was clean. Training sessions ran in parallel, with end-of-sprint showcases giving MCC staff the chance to learn and test features as they were built.

The site launched in March 2026:

"The main benefit of the new CMS is the possibilities it opens. There's scope to use AI to support changes in how modern users search for content, and enable more staff to make minor changes themselves. It also gives the council a foundation to build spin-off sites in-house rather than external contracting." Mark Hesford, Digital Communications Manager, Manchester City Council.

The results

The immediate gains from this project are operational, but they matter because they're what make everything else possible.

Content teams working faster and more independently

Finding a page in the old CMS could take up to a minute; now it’s seconds. Single sign-on removes a further step, and pages can be scheduled to publish and expire automatically.

The content workflow has changed, too. Previously, new content was built in UAT, signed off, and then rebuilt on the live site. Now it can be created directly on live, hidden from search until ready, and shared for review via a link – removing the copy-paste work that came with every previous build.

Less reliance on ICT

Headers, footers, CTAs and alerts can now be updated by the content team directly, without code changes or ICT involvement.

Control over search visibility

For the first time, MCC controls which pages appear in Google and other search engines – a capability the previous platform didn't support.

A clearer picture of demand

MCC now has access to non-cookie-dependent analytics. Between 27 April and 27 May, the DXP recorded 7,358,736 page views against GA4's 1,141,528 – a 544.7% difference – giving the team an unprecedented view of the true scale of demand for its digital services.

CRM integration in place

Verint CRM is now integrated, connecting residents directly into MCC's case management workflows for the first time.

What's next

The work done so far is a foundation, not a finish line. Content owners have been mapped across council services – the first step toward direct page ownership and self-service minor updates across the organisation.

MCC is actively planning an AI-powered content governance model, and the new platform is built to support it. Bespoke in-house microsites – previously dependent on external suppliers – are also being explored for the year ahead.

For a council the size of MCC, the real measure of this project will be what it enables over time: faster services, more accessible information, and a digital operation that the council itself controls.