Background
Sheffield City Council’s use of Confirm spans 26 years, beginning with its first implementation in the Landscape Services team in 2000. What started as a single department deployment has since evolved into a coordinated, multi department digital ecosystem.
In recent years, services including Waste Management, Pest Control, Car Parking, Playground Inspections, Parks & Countryside, Environmental Services and City Centre Management have integrated Confirm into their day to day operations. Across the council, paper heavy, manual processes have been replaced with real time digital workflows that increase transparency, improve compliance and enhance productivity.
Today, Confirm underpins job management, inspections, cost tracking, reporting and cross team collaboration, enabling Sheffield to deliver streamlined, evidence based public services across the city.
Strategic Leadership: Information Systems Team
Sheffield’s success with Confirm is strongly tied to the leadership of Jackie Bailey and Sanchia Hicks, who have coordinated implementations, driven adoption and supported staff across multiple departments. Their oversight has unified teams that once operated independently, ensuring consistent processes while retaining the flexibility each service needs.
Their guidance has shaped Confirm’s expansion from Waste and Pest Control to Car Parks, Playground Inspections, Parks & Countryside, and City Centre Management. This organic growth reflects increasing confidence in the system and demand for real-time visibility, mobile workflows and reliable reporting.
They have also championed a more data-driven culture, encouraging services to use dashboards, heat maps and analytics to inform decision-making. Their work has positioned Confirm as part of the council’s long-term strategy for efficiency and better service delivery.
Environmental Services & Pest Control
Environmental Services and Pest Control, jointly overseen by Dean Smith, deliver some of the most complex operational work in the city, clearing houses, addressing fly tipping, removing graffiti, safely disposing of needles and other sharps waste, handling noxious waste and carrying out pest treatments. Prior to Confirm, the team relied on printed job cards, handwritten notes and manual cost charging processes. Information could be delayed, duplicated or misplaced, making coordination challenging.
Confirm has completely modernized this workflow. Jobs are now issued digitally, recorded in real time and automatically costed. Managers have complete visibility of every action taken, supported by accurate audit trails and time-stamped records. The transformation has been significant, as Smith explained, “I couldn’t imagine going back to how it used to be.”
For Pest Control, mobile working has been especially impactful. Officers now start their day from home, receiving job details directly through Confirm rather than collecting paperwork. The system tracks job duration, treatment details and materials used, supporting accurate charging and helping managers analyze trends such as shifts in rat or cockroach reports. This growing dataset now informs service planning, forecasting and pricing decisions.
Confirm has also strengthened cross-team collaboration. Housing and Temporary Accommodation now raise jobs directly within Confirm, with dashboards allowing Environmental Services and Pest Control to track progress from enquiry to completion. This has eliminated email chains, reduced duplication of effort and improved accountability across the wider service.
Environmental Services and Pest Control have moved from fragmented processes to a fully digital, transparent and data-driven way of working that supports faster response times, greater accuracy and stronger evidence for decision-making.
Waste Management (Abandoned Vehicles)
The Waste Management team relies heavily on Confirm for managing abandoned vehicles, an increasingly high volume area of work. Senior Business Support Officer David Willis and his team respond to around seven or eight reports a day, equating to more than 30 per week.
Confirm has transformed how these cases are managed. The automated web form allows customers to enter a registration number, which Confirm instantly enriches with tax and MOT details, removing previous manual checks. The team now uses dashboards and status codes to track cases far more efficiently.
As Willis explained, “When I first started, everything was recorded on paper. Now we’ve got dashboards and status codes, it makes everything much more streamlined and easier to view.”
Over the last two years, the team has recorded more than 5,500 abandoned vehicles through Confirm. This dataset is increasingly valuable for identifying trends across the city, such as hotspots or recurring vehicle types. Confirm Web has further improved visibility and clarity, enabling the team to see full histories at a glance and understand what actions still need to be taken.
Confirm has made abandoned vehicle management more efficient, transparent and evidence-led, crucial for a growing workload with significant public visibility.
Car Parking Services
Car Parking Services has seen some of the most measurable improvements since implementing Confirm. Officers now manage their work more efficiently through mobile workflows, eliminating the need to return to base for paperwork. The team now benefits from clear visibility of defects, maintenance schedules and prioritized tasks.
Confirm has delivered:
- A 20% increase in daily officer productivity
- More reliable and fair job allocation
- Better oversight of machine maintenance and warranty issues
- Tamper-proof data supporting audit and compliance
- Enhanced team resilience during staff absence
- Stronger contractor performance management
Officers were involved early in designing and testing their workflows, a major factor in driving high adoption and enthusiasm. The service now operates with real-time insight and greater operational control, with Confirm serving as a single source of truth.
Playground & Education Site Inspections
A Playground Inspector inspects more than 180 playgrounds, 60 school sites and more than 8,000 individual play assets every quarter. Moving from a paper-based system to Confirm’s mobile app has transformed safety management, compliance and reporting.
The contrast was described vividly by a Sheffield Council spokesperson, “Before Confirm, everything was paper — inspections saved in someone’s G drive. Now everything is in one place, it’s easy to report on.”
Using the app, the Playground Inspector logs defects, takes photos, and records priorities directly on site, building a complete inspection history that supports insurance cases, FOI requests and long-term planning. Confirm has played a key role in several important outcomes for the council.
One case involved a claim related to outdoor gym equipment. “Because Confirm logged all the photos and safety checks, we could prove everything was in place, it shifted liability away from us,” a Sheffield Council spokesperson explained.
Recently, Data from Confirm helped secure more than £100,000 in Public Health funding for improvement to four playgrounds, using inspection evidence to demonstrate the necessity of replacing a damaged climbing frame.
The system is now helping the team expand into broader asset insights. As a playground operative explained, “We’re now using Confirm to build reports on things like accessible equipment, missing items, end of life assets… it’s helping us plan better and justify what we need.”
Confirm has become indispensable f or improving safety, compliance and strategic planning across Sheffield’s play spaces.
Driving better decisions through real-time data
Across departments, Confirm has become the foundation for more informed operational decisions. Managers now rely on real-time visibility of workloads, trends and historical context to guide planning, resource allocation and funding discussions.
Confirm enables:
- Reliable evidence for FOI and insurance queries
- Clear audit trails supporting accountability
- Accurate forecasting based on real data
- Better contractor performance management
- Identification of emerging trends in demand
This shift to evidence-based management has improved service planning and allowed teams to demonstrate impact more clearly.
Connected workflows and stronger collaboration
One of the greatest success stories of Confirm use within Sheffield is the way it unifies teams across the council. Environmental Services, Pest Control, Housing and Temporary Accommodation all now share digital workflows, ensuring jobs move seamlessly between teams without duplication or delays.
This joined-up approach has strengthened communication, accountability and clarity, ensuring residents receive faster and more coordinated responses.
Sheffield City Council’s multidepartment transformation with Confirm demonstrates how a well-designed digital platform can unlock efficiency, strengthen compliance and improve public services. Through the leadership of Jackie Bailey and Sanchia Hicks, and the commitment of departmental champions across the council, Confirm has become the trusted system for managing work, assets, inspections and evidence.
With growing interest in analytics and further expansion, Sheffield is positioned to continue building on this success and delivering even greater value to its teams and communities.