West Lothian Council

Through CivTech, we partnered with West Lothian Council's digital transformation, education and IT teams to understand how Early Learning and Childcare admissions worked in practice; from family applications through to placement decisions, appeals and reporting. A structured discovery phase mapped the workflows, stakeholder needs and friction points affecting both families and admissions officers. The result was Admit: a cloud-based admissions platform designed to standardise, automate and evidence key parts of the admissions lifecycle.

As the work progressed, Admit expanded to support Primary and Secondary school admissions, with funded-hours calculations built in to reduce manual administration. Key capabilities included:

• A responsive parent interface for submitting applications, uploading information and tracking progress
• A centralised council dashboard for monitoring applications, managing capacity and generating reports
• Configurable policy rules for eligibility windows, entitlement hours and changing admissions criteria
• Audit trails and logging to support consistent, transparent and defensible decision-making

How we approached it

Public sector admissions software is tested by how well it handles exceptions. We mapped the difficult paths first: appeals, late applications, mid-year placements, capacity changes and policy exceptions. From there, the product mirrored the council's workflows instead of forcing admissions into a generic case-management model. Working alongside the council and the Scottish Government through CivTech kept policy, operations and software decisions closely connected throughout the build.

Transforming the experience

Admit changed how West Lothian manages ELC and school admissions. Spreadsheet-led workflows, email trails and reliance on individual staff knowledge gave way to automated placement logic, embedded policy rules and clearer audit history. Families now receive clearer, time-stamped updates showing where each application sits in the process. Council teams spend less time chasing information and repeating manual tasks, and more time resolving exceptions and making informed placement decisions.

Pilot feedback highlighted fewer administrative bottlenecks and a better experience for both carers and council teams. Because the platform is configurable, it can adapt as statutory requirements, eligibility rules and reporting needs evolve, making it relevant to other Scottish local authorities facing similar admissions complexity.