Department for Transport · Content design · Digital publishing · Team leadership · Accessibility

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Overview

I spent around two years at the Department for Transport as a Senior Content Designer in a newly created Brexit communications team, working under the Head of Digital Publishing.

The work began with the rollout of the Brexit agreement, when new rules significantly affected people and businesses moving goods into and out of the UK. My role covered GOV.UK publishing, policy content, press releases and supporting printed communications such as pamphlets and brochures.

When the pandemic created a much wider volume of day-to-day publishing requests, I also took the lead on a large backlog of unresolved content requests. By changing how we communicated with requesters, reopening stalled conversations and supporting more junior designers, I helped reduce the outstanding backlog by around 80% and establish a leaner way of handling new work.

Role: Senior Content Designer
Organisation: Department for Transport
Duration: Around two years
Initial focus: Brexit communications and GOV.UK publishing
Later focus: Department-wide digital publishing during the pandemic
Team contribution: Content delivery, backlog recovery, line management and accessibility

Publishing complex policy at pace

The first phase of the role focused on publishing new Brexit policy and communications as arrangements were agreed and rolled out.

I worked with policy leads, press officers and other communications specialists to agree language, tone and approach, then formatted and published content on GOV.UK. The work also included press releases and material intended for physical distribution.

The challenge was to make rapidly changing policy understandable while maintaining the accuracy and consistency required for government publishing.

A growing publishing backlog

After roughly a year, the pandemic increased the volume and variety of publishing requests coming into the digital team.

There was a large backlog of tickets that had stalled. When I reviewed the oldest requests, I found that many had not stopped because the underlying work was impossible. The conversation had simply reached a dead end.

In some cases, junior designers had correctly identified problems with a request but had communicated them as blockers: asking for confusing additional information, saying something could not be done, or failing to explain what was needed to move the work forward.

I saw the problem less as a queue of difficult tickets and more as a breakdown in communication and ownership.

Turning blockers into routes forward

I made reducing the backlog a specific goal and began working through the oldest items.

I contacted the original requesters, explained that I wanted to get the work resolved, clarified what information was still needed and, where possible, proposed a practical route forward rather than simply asking them to restart the process.

That approach helped reduce the outstanding backlog by around 80%.

The underlying principle was similar to how I work in service design today: understand the genuine constraint, explain it clearly, and look for a way to meet the need rather than treating the constraint itself as the answer.

Improving the team process

Clearing the existing backlog would only have been a temporary fix if the same communication patterns continued.

I took on line management of two junior members of the team and used one-to-ones and day-to-day ticket reviews to help them improve how they handled requests.

That included advice on when a request genuinely could not proceed, how to explain the reason clearly, what information to ask for, and how to suggest alternatives rather than leaving the requester with a dead end.

Some of that involved difficult conversations about communication style and ways of working, but the result was a much leaner request system with fewer unresolved tickets.

Accessibility and legacy content

I also completed significant accessibility training and applied it to older material on the Department for Transport website.

This included reviewing inaccessible documents, including PDFs, and helping make content accessible before it was republished.

That work strengthened my understanding of accessibility beyond page-level content and reinforced the need to consider the format and delivery mechanism as part of the user experience.

Outcome

The immediate result was a reduction of around 80% in the outstanding publishing-request backlog.

More importantly, the team moved toward a more constructive way of handling incoming work: clearer communication, fewer dead ends and greater focus on finding a route to resolution.

The work was recognised positively by my manager and became part of a broader leadership role alongside my day-to-day content design and publishing responsibilities.

What this demonstrates

• Content design under pressure – turning complex and changing policy into usable public-facing communications.
• Operational improvement – identifying why a publishing process was failing and reducing a large backlog by around 80%.
• Pragmatic problem-solving – replacing ‘we cannot do this’ responses with clearer requirements and routes forward.
• People leadership – line managing and coaching junior designers through difficult delivery and communication situations.
• Accessibility – reviewing and improving legacy documents as part of accessible digital publishing.
• Range – working across GOV.UK publishing, press, printed communications and team operations.