Case Study: Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities achieves 80% faster remote access and robust zero-trust security with Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange

DLUHC Improves Remote Experiences, Cutting Time to Connect By 80%

The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC), which supports 382 local authorities and around 5,000 staff across the UK, needed to become cloud-first and enable a fully distributed, mobile workforce. Reliance on legacy perimeter security, firewalls and problematic VPNs created poor remote experiences, fragmented visibility, and operational complexity, so the department set out to adopt a zero trust security model.

DLUHC deployed the Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange (including ZIA and ZPA) to eliminate VPNs and perimeter appliances, deliver direct secure access to internet, SaaS and private apps, and simplify management. In three months Zscaler processed over 3 billion transactions, prevented 81 million policy violations and blocked nearly 99,000 threats; remote connection time dropped by about 80% (an estimated productivity gain of ~50,000 hours/year), while enabling fast onboarding, easier reporting, and secure cross‑government collaboration.

Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities

Dave Baldwin

Chief Technology Officer