How the Maritime and Coastguard Agency replaced a supplier-owned grants system without missing a payment
"Legacy data migration has been proven and plans are in place to decommission legacy systems."
Service Standard Assessment Panel
Beta assessment, December 2022
2 hours
Previously, monthly returns took up to 5 days
50 Minutes
Previously, provider admin per claim cycle 6.5 hours
83%
Claims approved with no administrative support
THE CHALLENGE
Claims the system could not check
The legacy portal had kept the scheme running for years, but it recorded claims without calculating what each trainee was due. Providers faced a time-consuming monthly process, with errors surfacing late and claims returned for rework. As the administration contract approached renewal, the MCA wanted a service it could own, change and re-tender.
Key challenges included:
- Manual entry of each trainee’s training weeks across five linked forms, opened in separate browser tabs and completed in a fixed order
- Checks that compared forms but could not calculate entitlement
- Errors and rework that meant monthly returns could take up to five days
- Anonymised trainee records with no training start date
- Duplicate records when trainees moved between providers
- The need for MCA ownership and the flexibility to change the service or re-tender its administration
THE SOLUTION
A service built around the trainee’s enrolment
With no access to the legacy code, Catapult CX reconstructed how the scheme worked using claim forms, legislation, desk instructions and interviews with policy and administrative staff. Its engineers also rebuilt the database schema from a data extract.
Rather than digitising the existing forms, Catapult made the trainee’s enrolment the core record. Course start and end dates allow the service to calculate monthly claims. Providers only record changes that reduce a claim, such as an absence or transfer.
Key elements included:
- Enrolment-based records that enable automatic monthly claim calculations
- A GOV.UK service designed with providers and administrators, assessed as Met against the Service Standard at alpha and beta
- Cloud infrastructure defined as code and integrated with the MCA’s identity platform
- Automated migration that calculated missing start dates from payment history, validated through a three-month parallel run with the legacy portal
THE RESULTS
Faster claims, correct payments and a service the MCA controls
The new service reduced the time and support needed to submit claims, with no missed provider payments during the switch-over. The MCA owns the code, data and infrastructure definitions. When it re-tendered the managed service, another supplier took it on as built, and it continues to run.
Key results included:
- Monthly returns reduced from up to five days to two hours
- Administrative support per provider reduced from 6.5 hours to about 50 minutes per claim cycle
- 83% of claims approved without administrative support
- Automatic calculation of new claims, removing manual calculation errors
- No missed payments for any provider during the switch-over
