For over nine years, we’ve been a proud and strategic partner to Transport for London (TfL), creating and delivering the world’s most advanced vehicle detection system to support the largest clean air zone. This partnership has transformed London’s transport infrastructure, improving air quality, enhancing road safety, and supporting more efficient journeys for millions of citizens.
At Capita, improving citizen experience is at the heart of everything we do. We provide the people, systems and processes needed to manage the entire journey from image receipt through to payment or enforcement, across all of TfL’s key schemes: Congestion Charging, Low Emissions Zone (LEZ), Traffic Enforcement, Ultra Low Emissions Zone (ULEZ) and the Safer Lorry Scheme (DVS). By aligning our expertise with TfL’s vision, we are helping to create a cleaner environment, reducing congestion and promoting safer streets throughout London.
Challenges: Delivering consistent impact at scale
Supporting TfL in the design and delivery of these transformative schemes has been crucial to implementing the Mayoral policies and strategies, which bring substantial benefits to millions of Londoners. However, realising these initiatives required overcoming significant challenges: managing scalability to service millions of users, coordinating across multiple agencies and adapting to evolving public policy requirements. Addressing these complexities called for a resilient and adaptable approach, ensuring consistent quality and impact across all of TfL’s major schemes.
Solutions: Flexible, scalable and technology-driven
- Core service delivery and strategic governance
We provided comprehensive business process operations, including back and front office, business IT, customer channels, payment processing, workforce planning, management information, and finance support. Over the past nine years, we have consistently adapted our operational infrastructure to support TfL’s expanding schemes, providing agile, scalable solutions to meet evolving demands.
With over 40 years of public sector transformation experience, we built strong, collaborative relationships with TfL, prioritising trust and transparency at every level. To ensure seamless delivery, we established an integrated Project Management Office, aligning governance and reporting across 20 suppliers to work closely with TfL’s operational cadence. This unified approach reflects our shared commitment to achieving TfL’s objectives. - Operational flexibility and workforce development
We developed a flexible service architecture designed to adapt rapidly to shifting needs, enabling us to respond with speed and precision. Key actions included:- Scaling workforce: To meet increased demand, we more than doubled the operational headcount during critical scheme rollouts, adjusted the Target Operating Model, and extended operational hours to accommodate new user requirements. This ensured capacity, excellent service delivery, and flexibility when the public needed it the most.
- Socially valued recruitment: Through a secure, flexible hybrid model, we created nearly a thousand new jobs across the UK, with a focus on supporting local economies in areas such as Coventry.
- Learning and development: Our award-winning learning and development programme provided targeted induction and ongoing professional development for TfL’s workforce. Using our ‘Army of One’ methodology, teams delivered exceptional customer service at each touchpoint. Staff also have access to over 228 e-learning modules, equipping them with the latest skills to meet the evolving demands of their role.
- Customer-centric payment solutions
We designed a suite of user-centric payment systems that provide flexibility and convenience across multiple channels. These include:
- Auto pay: A monthly billing feature for congestion, ULEZ, and LEZ charges.
- Online: An official payment portal that facilitates TfL’s transactions.
- TfL pay to drive in London app: A free app for easy payments for congestion, ULEZ, and LEZ charges.
- London Road User Charging (LRUC) and phone payment support: Additional channels that meet diverse user needs, ensuring accessibility and ease of use.
- Award-winning technology partnerships
To support TfL’s mission to “unlock the potential of technology for our customers, colleagues, and for London,” we established a Chief Technology Officer (CTO) early in the contract. This dynamic environment combines our extensive technical expertise with a focus on pioneering technology initiatives. By leveraging strong partnerships with TfL, key partners, and hyperscalers, we created solutions that are repeatable, scalable, and cost-effective. The CTO draws on our full suite of technology capabilities, including innovation, strategic planning, AI, machine learning, cloud, and DevOps. In 2024, we were honoured to receive the ‘Transport Technology Partner of the Year’ award in recognition of our work on the account.
- 2019: We re-architected the on-premise data centre and introduced customer-centric journeys through IVR and web to support the initial introduction of ULEZ.
- 2021: We undertook Europe’s largest cloud migration to Microsoft Azure, enabling TfL’s technology to scale effectively and support changing demands. This included the adoption of Platform as a Service (PaaS) solutions for efficiency.
- 2023: To support the ULEZ expansion to Greater London, we re-architected our core middleware solution to a cloud-native containerised Kubernetes technology, achieving both scalability and cost reduction for TfL. This infrastructure is capable of processing more than 4.5 million roadside images daily for scrappage applications.
- GenAI integration: We introduced GenAI into the technology stack to automate discount applications and streamline Freedom of Information (FOI) requests processing, using Azure OpenAI and Kubernetes technologies to enhance service quality and responsiveness.
- Continuous improvement: Robotic Process Automation (RPA) has automated high volume, repetitive tasks, such as refunds, reducing errors and speeding up processing. Implementing Optical Character Recognition (OCR) has reduced manual data entry, driving more efficiency across operations.
Results: Measurable impact in clean air, road safety and service quality
Our collaboration with TfL has delivered substantial, measurable outcomes, underscoring the success and scale of our partnership.
- Compliance and environmental impact: 95% of vehicles across inner and outer London are now comply with clean air standards – a remarkable increase from 39% in 2017 – accompanied by a 44% reduction in harmful nitrous gases.
- Community benefits: Over 37,000 Londoners, businesses and charities have benefitted from scrappage programmes, contributing to cleaner air and healthier communities.
- Operational scale and efficiency: Each month, we handle over 6.8 million work items and support more than 4 million customers through multiple channels (web, IVR, assisted IVR, mobile, call centre and post). Our work includes:
- Handling 95,000 calls and processing 22,000 IVR payments.
- Addressing 50,000 enquiries, covering refunds, account and statement investigations, payments and scheme information.
- Processing 33,000 validation applications to assess compliance and exemption eligibility, safeguarding against fraud.
- Manually verifying 6.5m low confidence ANPR images against DVLA data to facilitate PCN issuance.
- Processing 44,000 customers representations for PCN disputes.
- Handling 265,000 DVLA responses and exception notifications to support continued enforcement.
- Reconciling over 9 million transactions monthly to ensure financial accuracy.
- Enforcement and communication: As TfL’s trusted communications partner, we manage the end-to-end enforcement process, from breach notification to payment resolution. Each year, we produce 16 million evidential packs and handle over 2.3 million mail pieces. Our production facility delivers these packs with precision, offering both traditional and digital fulfilment, tailoring communication to recipients’ preferences and providing end-to-end support with comprehensive evidence submissions, videos and images for full transparency.
Operating the world’s most complex road charging scheme
Our work has been instrumental in supporting TfL’s transformation of London’s transport landscape, creating the largest urban anti-pollution zone of its kind globally. As new schemes are introduced to the public, it is essential that each initiative is delivered within a predictable cost framework, meeting stringent timelines and requirements to enable a seamless transition. Our approach centres around user needs and experiences, ensuring flexibility – for instance, waiving charges if drivers are diverted into the zone due to route changes.
This work demonstrates how aligning robust service architecture with advanced technical infrastructure enables consistent performance, even under the greatest demands. Together, these efforts drive widespread adoption, reduce support costs, improve efficiency and provide essential adaptability to shifting trends in road user charging. This journey reinforces our shared commitment with TfL to public good, better air quality, reduced congestion and safer streets – ultimately ensuring that we keep London moving.
Find out how our expertise in managing complex operational and technological challenges can support your organisation’s mission:
