Overview
Local authority enforcement officers issue Fixed Penalty Notices for offences such as fly-tipping, littering, and breaches of Public Space Protection Orders (PSPOs). The existing process relied on a paper-style notification form emailed to a central inbox and then manually copied into a tracking spreadsheet — slow, duplicative, and error-prone.
I extended an existing, proven field-enforcement Power App so that issuing an FPN became part of an officer's normal case workflow, and automated the path from field capture to central register. This removed the double data entry, reduced errors, and gave management live visibility of issued notices and outstanding payments.
The problem
- Officers completed a Word notification form on issuing an FPN and emailed it to a central admin inbox.
- Admin then manually re-keyed every notice into a tracking spreadsheet — the same data entered twice.
- The result was admin-heavy, time-consuming, and prone to duplication, transcription errors, and delay.
- The spreadsheet held the full case lifecycle (reminders, appeals, outcomes, payments) but nothing was automated — reminders and status changes were tracked by hand.
- There was no live visibility of issued notices, outstanding payments, or overdue reminders for management reporting.
- FPNs form part of a legal enforcement process, so data integrity, permissions, and a clear audit trail are essential.
What I built
- Field issuance inside the existing app. Extended the field-enforcement Power App (already used by officers on mobile and tablet) so that marking a case as "FPN issued" opens a short capture flow, records evidence, and auto-generates the notice — no separate form.
- One data source. Consolidated the notification form and tracking spreadsheet into a single data source, eliminating the double entry and moving toward one authoritative table.
- Automated write to the register. Power Automate flows generate the notification, email it, and write the record directly into the central FPN register — removing the manual transfer of ~200 notices per month.
- Offence-code-driven fines. Offence-code dropdowns auto-populate the correct penalty amount (full and reduced rate) from the selected offence, cutting a common source of manual error and keeping fines aligned with current legislation.
- Fewer taps in the field. Pre-filled routine fields (issuing officer, date) to minimise input for officers on the move.
- Management oversight. A Power BI dashboard for performance reporting, mirroring an approach already trusted by the team.
- Resilience. An email copy of every submitted record is kept as a safeguard, so data can be recovered if an automated write ever fails.
Key features
- Field issuance on mobile and tablet, embedded in the existing case lifecycle
- Single source of truth — form and spreadsheet consolidated into one register
- Auto-generated notification plus automated email to the central inbox
- Automated write to the central register — no re-keying
- Offence-code-driven fine calculation (full / reduced rate) tied to legislation
- Validation and pre-population to reduce errors and clicks
- Power BI performance dashboard for management oversight
- Email backup of every record for resilience and recovery
Architecture & design decisions
Built on a proven platform rather than a new system
The FPN work extends an existing enforcement app the team already relied on, keeping training and change minimal.
Three delivery routes evaluated
Extend the existing canvas app with more automation, build a separate canvas app, or build a Dataverse-backed model-driven app. The Dataverse / model-driven direction was preferred for its security model, granular permissions, auditability, and ability to scale to other services.
Automate the existing process, don't redesign it
A deliberately low-risk approach that made adoption smooth — the message to the team was simple:
"We're not changing the process, just automating parts of it."
Full-lifecycle data model
Designed to cover the FPN journey end to end: issue details, offender and location data, offence code and penalty amounts, first/second reminders, appeals, outcomes, payments, and prosecution notes.
Shipped iteratively
Delivered through a dedicated test environment before publishing to production, with testers validating both the laptop and mobile experiences.
Impact
- Eliminated manual re-keying of ~200 FPNs per month — the single biggest admin saving in the process.
- Cut transcription and fine-amount errors through validation and offence-code-driven auto-population.
- Improved data quality and audit trail on a legally sensitive process.
- Gave management live performance visibility through Power BI dashboards.
For context: the field-enforcement platform this work extends had already roughly doubled team productivity after digitising officers' day-to-day case management (annual patrols rose from ~97,000 to ~180,000). This project brought the same low-code, field-first approach to FPNs.
What's next
- Automated first and second payment reminders
- Template letters (reminders and outcomes) generated directly from the record
- Payment integration — reconciling online payments back to each notice via a unique FPN reference
- Structured tracking of appeals and legal escalation
Skills demonstrated
- Low-code application development
- Workflow automation
- Data modelling
- BI / dashboard development
- Stakeholder-driven requirements gathering
- Delivery in a live operational & legal context