Protecting UK Businesses from unfair trading practices through digital innovation

How Transform delivered the world's first fully digital Trade Remedies service to protect British industry post-Brexit.

What kept them up at night

For over four decades, the UK hadn't managed its own trade remedies or trade policy, so with Brexit looming, we faced a stark reality. Departing the EU without a trade remedies service would leave UK businesses exposed to unfair trading practices, putting jobs and communities at risk.

Something had to be done.

The UK needed a system that was objective, unbiased, open and transparent, enabling businesses to apply for new trade remedies, seek reviews of existing measures, and join current investigations.

But how do you deliver a service where there's no existing UK expertise, no established processes, and no government team ready to handle trade remedies? You enlist Transform.

How we helped

We understood the challenge, not only building out the trade remedies service, but crafting a transformative digital experience that would put the users at the heart. To do so, we had to navigate the complexities of this project, mastering 650 pages of technical World Trade Organisation (WTO) guidance targeted at government officials and economists.  

So how’d we do it?  

• Extensive research  
  We conducted over 60 research sessions during discovery and alpha phases, engaging with UK businesses, trade lawyers, and international experts. This focussed less on consultation and more on collaborative creation, ensuring every design decision was grounded in real user needs. 
   
• Service design excellence 
  The WTO trade remedies process is inherently complex, highly legalistic, and often lengthy due to its strict due-process requirements — including detailed evidence gathering, transparency obligations, and frequent opportunities for appeal or litigation. Our service designers embraced the complexity, creating the 'Rainbow flow' service map (see below) that visualised the entire user journey across investigations that can extend up to 15 months. 

We adopted a 'digital by default' approach, but recognised that the nature of trade remedies would require both online and offline processes that are heavily involved. It could take up to three months for a business to prepare a case. The solution? A task list design pattern that gives users clear visibility of their entire journey, allows easy navigation, and provides a genuine sense of progress, especially as users were able to return and update information as and when they liked. This was coupled with guidance and upload options for users to submit evidence from Microsoft O365, as that best met user needs.

• Agile delivery under pressure
  Using agile principles, we broke development into focused sprint cycles, prioritising features based on delivery risk and day-one necessity. This approach meant we could adapt to changing political requirements whilst maintaining momentum towards our fixed deadline.

Transform positioned the UK with world-leading digital capability in trade remedies, demonstrating that when vision meets user-centred design and collaborative delivery, we can transform the most complex challenges into strategic advantages.