Case Study: Defra achieves faster, happier permitting and licensing with UiPath automation

Robots creating happy faces at Defra

Defra, the UK government department responsible for safeguarding the natural environment, faced a mix of modern and aging legacy systems that made permit and licensing administration slow, stressful, and inefficient. Working with UiPath and its robotic process automation (RPA) platform, Defra looked for a way to reduce repetitive manual work for staff across its Environment Agency and wider Defra Group.

UiPath helped Defra automate high-volume back-office tasks for environmental permits, water abstraction licenses, and related services, using attended robots and a high-supervision delivery model. The results were significant: one process dropped from 65 minutes to 6 minutes 54 seconds, saving about an hour per transaction and freeing staff to focus on more valuable work across thousands of cases each year, with future automations expected to deliver productivity gains equivalent to more than 20 full-time employees.

Defra

Dave More

Service Owner, Digital Robotic Automation CoE