This article was originally published by UK Authority on 23 July 2026. View the original article here.

Long-term relationships deliver results. Our seven-year partnership with Sunderland City Council is benefiting citizens, start-ups, patients and even the venerable football club of the city in the North East. 

Over the seven-year period, the council has deployed smart city technologies and infrastructure to improve operations and pave the way for delivering innovative, inclusive, city-wide services into the future.

Speaking at UKAuthorITty’s Smart Places & Connected Communities virtual event, alongside Liz St Louis, Sunderland’s director for smart cities, we mapped out how the partnership has been able to take the long view, rather than focus on short term returns, the benefits this had delivered and the possibilities this has opened up.

Sunderland has used digital as ‘the new town hall’, bringing its communities together via digital interaction. A set of immersive and interactive exhibitions that use the digital infrastructure investments bring people together, creating what St Louis describes as a ‘vibrant’ city. 

But it's not just about having fun, important as that is; the same approach to digital has been used to create 37 digital hubs across the city in connected voluntary and community buildings. These hubs spread digital literacy and skills to the city’s residents, helping them with downloading and using the NHS app for example, completing online job applications and learning the digital life skills of our modern world. St Louis believes this not only creates safer and better communities but drives economic growth.  

Local employers benefit too. Automotive firm Nissan has a major factory in the city and also utilises the nearby port for importing and exporting, and Sunderland is assessing ways to use automation technology on the routes between the factory and port. Advanced automation technologies are already being trialled in the region with Newcastle University and agricultural technology providers.

Improved connectivity already operates at the grounds of Premiership football club Sunderland FC, a part of the city that was a blackspot, and St Louis says this is making a huge difference to fans and the operations of the club in terms of seat sales.

Sunderland is also fast catching up with Cambridge, London and Oxford as a hub for UK-based start-up businesses. The city counts 28 successful early-stage businesses benefiting from a programme that is only possible due to the investment made by the partnership into network infrastructure.

Delivering better public services

Sunderland’s investment into infrastructure and partnership has led to a more efficient local authority. Its team members have access to 25 different data products from which they can make data-driven decisions. Teams directly benefiting from this data include the business improvement district, events, communications, and planning departments. Data available to them includes insight into traffic, weather data, pedestrian flows, and even integrations with payment service providers such as Mastercard, all of which enable the council to know how it is performing at all times. An example of this was a recent Restaurant Week which tracked and recorded an increase in food and beverage sales of 7%.

As the council adopts artificial intelligence (AI), the local authority is able to detect hot spots of issues where action is needed, as well as fully analyse the verbatim comments from residents in surveys. AI enables all responses to be categorised and better utilised by the authority. Using OpenAI, the council can scan all verbatim comments and create a demographic and sentiment analysis, identifying bias, whether overt or subtle.

Data from its SAP enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform is also being surfaced by AI in ways that make it more accessible to team members. AI is also helping analyse social workers’ notes to improve their processes.

Built on partnership

The developments in AI and increased services for residents are underpinned by the seven-year partnership with us. That partnership was formed as Sunderland City Council set out its digital ambitions and it became clear that the local authority lacked the digital infrastructure to match its ambitions. At Boldyn, we look for long-term partnerships. For these to succeed, it is essential for local authorities to have a different approach to procurement, which Sunderland City Council did. 

The driver behind this is that typical partnerships are boxed in by a three-year or five-year view. These time periods necessitate short projects based on a single investment, whereas what the city has achieved was completed through a long-term view, with long-term investments and a long view on returns.

That then enables both the local authority and the technology partner to build up a set of capabilities that will truly transform service provision. For example, at Sunderland City Council, Boldyn built a networking bedrock, which then supported the city to develop the data platform that informs the council and other public sector bodies. Point solutions can be integrated to improve the way Sunderland City Council deals with issues such as damp and mould in housing or bin collection. In most local government organisations, these remain point solutions, but with a digital infrastructure and data platform they merge into a single platform for monitoring and visualising the performance and experience of both the local authority and its residents. This creates a platform for innovation, enabling teams to see new service delivery opportunities and areas for improvement or innovation.

The council has also demonstrated that high levels of connectivity increase social inclusion by providing citizens and council staff with a powerful digital network.

It chose to work with Boldyn as we can guarantee local authorities that its network hosts thousands of neutral host assets, ensuring connectivity across the region a local authority is responsible for. Our local authority customers gain connectivity infrastructure via WiFi, mobile and private networks. Using the latest 5G connectivity, local authorities can connect Internet of Things (IoT) devices, public services, data platforms, and edge technologies.  

With long-term investment by the Canadian Pension Fund into Boldyn Networks, local authorities can be sure that we are able to make those long term commitments that the transformation of public services requires. Unlike other network providers, we have no imperative to report an immediate return, so we can work with our partner councils on jointly realising the long term benefits.

Sunderland City Council is an example of excellence, strong leadership and a ‘what if’ mindset - a public sector organisation willing to take a different approach to partnership, which has unlocked value for its citizens and created a public-private partnership that benefits all involved.

Danny Kelly is Commercial Director for Public Sector at Boldyn Networks. You can catch up below with both Danny and Liz's presentations to Smart Places & Smart Communities and learn more about Sunderland: The UK's smartest city