Our story
In 2017, Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council built their own in-house income management system. Barnsley had identified an opportunity to build this system to meet the real needs of their staff and council. Thier own IMS gave them greater control, improved user experiences, and lowered running costs compared with proprietary alternatives.
Recognising the IMS could be valuable to other councils, Barnsley’s work became a DLUHC Local Digital Fund project. A shared vision emerged: for local government teams to build their own IMS together, in the open.
The project followed agile delivery methods, starting discovery in 2019. Dorset and Huntingdonshire councils joined from the alpha phase. Alpha proved the viability of the IMS, and the team continued into beta in summer 2021. Lewisham joined the team, and the partnership continues to grow.
Richard Kingston, Former Digital Programme Manager at Barnsley
“We initially created the system for our use at Barnsley, but to make this IMS something that other councils can use, we decided to build in other functionality too with the goal of making it open source. That way, we have an IMS that has been created by local government, for local government.”
Glen Conroy, ICT Operations Manager at Dorset
“People only notice an IMS when it’s not working. Either payments get taken or they don’t, so our aim is to make the application as easy to use as possible and ensure it does what it needs to do.”
Partners
The current partners on the project are:
Lead partner on the IMS project and community. Glen Conroy leads IMS community engagement from Dorset.
The originating council. Built the first IMS in 2017 and drove the open source IMS vision for local government.
Adopted Local Gov IMS in 2026 with the support of managed service provider Tailwind Digital.
Provides fully managed implementation, hosting, and support for councils adopting Local Gov IMS. tailwinddigital.io ↗
Supported the project team through a proof of concept in 2025, providing useful feedback on new features.
The community is open. Get in touch to find out how to get involved.
Project partners from the Local Digital Funded project stages:
Supported the project team as delivery partner throughout beta development.
Joined from the alpha phase and contributed to early development of the system.
Joined the project team during beta, contributing to development and testing of the system.
The IMS community is open to all councils. Attend Show and Share sessions and help shape the direction of the project. Get in touch to find out more →