Software for public services that have to work
Fresh Code designs, builds and supports the systems behind UK central government services — and runs a product of its own alongside them.
- in UK central government
- 12 yearsin UK central government
- Border Force, 2014–2026, continuous
- Home OfficeBorder Force, 2014–2026, continuous
- Probation Service, February 2026 – present
- Ministry of JusticeProbation Service, February 2026 – present
- our own product, built and run by us
- MC Server Worldour own product, built and run by us
Twelve years, two departments, systems people depend on
Since 2014 we have worked almost exclusively on UK central government services, where the cost of getting it wrong is measured in queues at the border or a missed contact with someone on probation. Both engagements involve operational data about real people, in environments where handling it correctly is not negotiable.
What we do
Design, build and support — the whole life of a system, not a slice of it.
- Design
- Working out what should be built, and what shouldn't. Most of the cost of a system is decided before anyone writes code.
- Build
- Delivering it, hands on. Twelve years of production systems in government, not slide decks about them.
- Support
- Keeping it running, and bringing the cost down. The Border Force tool got cheaper and more stable after it shipped, because somebody kept working on it.
How we work
Across twelve years the work has spanned the disciplines government buys separately. We have done all of them, usually on the same programme.
- Solution design
- Turning a problem somebody has into a system that answers it — the approach, the data, the integrations, and the trade-offs, settled before the build starts.The Border Force staffing tool began as a problem about queues and rosters. We conceived the response to it, then delivered it.
- Technical architecture
- The structural decisions: how a service is built, hosted, secured and scaled, and what it costs to run once it is live. Written down well enough to get past a design authority.We cut the Border Force application's running cost by reducing what it consumed, while making it more stable — an architecture decision, not a tuning pass.
- Engineering leadership
- Setting technical direction for a delivery team and keeping the standard up: review, testing, the unglamorous decisions that determine whether a service survives contact with real use.Fresh Code currently leads delivery of the Probation Service contact tool at the Ministry of Justice.
- Owning a product end to end
- Conception, design, build, launch, operations and support — one party accountable for the whole life of a thing, including the parts that only show up after it ships.MC Server World is ours from inception: we designed it, built it, run it, and answer for it when it breaks.
Our own products
Client work is not the whole of it. We design, build, run and support our own software too, which is the fastest way to stay honest about what the advice costs to follow.
MC Server World
Minecraft server hosting for families and friends — a server of your own in about two minutes, with no command line and no monthly cost for a world nobody is playing on.
mcserverworld.com