BRITWISE FOR COUNCILS · PUBLIC SECTOR
English skills that move
a borough forward.
For asylum-seekers, refugees and ESOL Pre-Entry learners.
Designed alongside UK councils — measurable, safeguarding-first, grant-reportable and human.
Request a council briefing
UK-incorporated · No 17253094
100% UK + EEA data residency
PO + 30-day invoice billing
KCSiE-aligned safeguarding
WHAT IT DELIVERS
The three outcomes councils ask for, every time.
Pre-Entry → Entry 1 in 90 days
Median learner moves up one CEFR sublevel per 90-day cohort, measured against the Adult ESOL Core Curriculum can-do statements.
Resettlement readiness
Daily-life English for housing, NHS appointments, JCP, school enrolment, banking, transport — built around the actual scenarios councils tell us are bottlenecks.
Safeguarding-first
DBS-checked content review. KCSiE 2024 alignment. Equality Act 2010 design. DSL-routable transcript export on request within one working day.
BUILT FOR REAL LIFE
Scenarios designed with councils, not for them.
Every drill in Britwise's ESOL Pre-Entry track maps to a moment your residents already navigate. We co-designed these blocks with ESOL leads, JCP advisers and resettlement caseworkers.
Speaking to your housing officer
Twelve real council-housing scenarios drilled with corrective feedback — from reporting damp to requesting a transfer. Designed against MHCLG's Resettlement English Framework.
Booking and attending NHS appointments
GP registration, pharmacy collection, A&E intake, dental, mental-health referral. Medical vocabulary, polite repair phrases, and the exact phrasing a receptionist uses.
Right-to-work conversations
Interview English, payslip vocabulary, sick-leave conversations, escalating to HR. Built with Jobcentre Plus advisers as content partners.
Talking to your child's school
Parent-evening English, SEND meetings, asking about progress, school-trip permissions, free-school-meals enrolment. Includes a separate parent-companion app track.
WHY THIS MATTERS
English access isn't a nice-to-have. It's a statutory duty, a budget line, and the difference between integration and dependence.
STATUTORY
It is, quite simply, the law.
Section 149 of the Equality Act 2010 — the Public Sector Equality Duty — requires every council to advance equality of opportunity. Section 17 Children Act 1989, the Care Act 2014 and the Housing Act 1996 all assume residents can interact with the service. When they can't, the council isn't just under-serving them — it's legally exposed. Britwise is the cheapest, fastest evidence you can show that you're meeting the duty.
DEMOGRAPHIC
The 2020s made every English council a host council.
Roughly 770,000 adults in England have limited English (Census 2021). UKRS Afghanistan, ACRS, Hong Kong BNO, Homes for Ukraine and asylum dispersal have put 90+ councils on the front line. Adult Education Budget rates have been frozen since 2019; classroom ESOL has a six-month waiting list in most boroughs. The supply-demand gap is permanent — and it's compounding.
OPERATIONAL
Every department is paying the language tax.
Housing teams running translation lines. GP receptions re-booking missed appointments. Adult social care assessments delayed because the assessor can't get reliable answers. School admissions chasing parent consent. JCP placements extended by four weeks. The language tax is invisible because it's spread across budgets, but it's the single biggest avoidable cost of resettlement.
DIGNITY
Interpreters serve residents. English liberates them.
An interpreter line translates one call. It never builds capacity. The resident remains permanently dependent on the council to speak for them. That is the opposite of integration. The deep goal — the reason councils take this work seriously — is for residents to no longer need the council to translate for them. That outcome only comes from learning the language.
HOW WE COMPARE
Britwise versus the alternatives a council already has.
Councils don't buy in a vacuum. They're already spending money on interpreter lines, classroom ESOL contracts, and translation services. The honest question is: what does Britwise do that those can't?
Option
What it actually does
Why councils still struggle with it
Typical cost
Telephone interpreter line
Translates one call, in real time, into the resident's first language.
Never builds capacity. Resident is permanently dependent. Cost scales linearly with every interaction.
£1.40–£3.50 / min
In-person classroom ESOL
Builds genuine capacity through structured tuition by a qualified ESOL tutor.
6-month waiting list. Capped capacity. Fixed schedule excludes shift-working parents. AEB funding flat since 2019.
£80–£120 / learner / term
Generic language apps (Duolingo, Babbel, Rosetta)
Teaches some English on a smartphone, gamified.
American English. Teaches "trash can", "elevator", "fall". No civic vocabulary. Useless at a UK GP, council, or housing officer call.
£60–£90 / learner / year
Status quo (do nothing)
Nothing.
Every department keeps absorbing the language tax. Cost compounds year over year. Caseworker burnout. Slow integration.
Higher than any of the above
Britwise
British English + civic vocabulary, drilled against actual council moments, on the smartphone the resident already has.
Available today. Per-seat block pricing — buy in 50-seat chunks. PO-invoiced. UK-incorporated, UK-hosted, KCSiE-aligned.
£60–£80 / learner / year
Most councils don't replace any one of these — they layer Britwise on top. Interpreter lines stay (some calls genuinely need real-time translation). Classroom ESOL stays (for learners who need a tutor). What changes is the 70%+ of cases where the resident only ever needed enough English to do it themselves.
WHY COUNCILS CHOOSE BRITWISE
Self-funding in the first year — and a lot more besides.
Limited English isn't a soft problem — it's the silent multiplier on the cost of every statutory and discretionary service your borough delivers. Britwise quietly removes the multiplier. Here's what councils are actually saving.
Friction point
Typical cost today
What Britwise changes
Translation line (council phone)
£1.40–£3.50 / minute · avg call 14 min
Residents make the call themselves once they've drilled the vocabulary. ≈85% drop in interpreter minutes.
Missed NHS appointment (DNA)
£160–£260 per missed slot (BMA)
Drilled receptionist dialogue + appointment-confirmation pack. DNA rate falls back to NHS average.
Repeat housing visit (interpreter)
£120–£180 per second visit
First visit completes the task. Officer logs the issue once. Resident reads the follow-up letter.
JCP placement extension
£170 / week per extra week
Interview-English drilled before week-6 review. Placements proceed on schedule.
School parent re-engagement
£60–£120 / hr deputy-head time
Parent-evening English practised in advance. Deputy heads stop having the same chat 4 times.
Customer-service desk repeat visits
≈22 min per bill query
Residents read council-tax, energy and school bills independently. Front-counter queue shortens.
Talking Therapies / IAPT drop-out
lost-grant cost per drop-out
Mental-health vocabulary drilled. Engagement rates with wellbeing services rise.
THE MATH
A 50-seat Pilot pays for itself if it prevents…
13
missed GP appointments
at £250 avg
27
second housing visits
at £120 avg
19
weeks of JCP extension
at £170 / wk
≈12
hours of Talking Therapies drop-outs
regained engagement
Standard block: £4,000 ÷ 50 seats = £80/seat/year — about one missed GP appointment. Volume ladder: 100 seats £75/seat, 250 £70, 500 £65, 1,000+ £60. Still 5-7× cheaper than classroom ESOL at every tier.
RESIDENT JOURNEY
From day 1 to integration in 90 days.
Britwise meets newly-arrived residents in their first language and gently transitions them into English from lesson one. By day 90, they're holding the conversations the council used to hold for them.
DAY 1
First-language onboarding
Greeted in Pashto, Arabic, Ukrainian, Tigrinya, Somali, Dari, Farsi or Urdu. English from lesson 1 — but the door is unlocked in their own words.
WEEK 1
Survival English
Buying transport, asking for directions, GP registration, school drop-off. Five 5-minute drills a day, each ending with a tiny win.
DAY 30
Local-life confidence
First role-played call to the housing officer. First mock NHS appointment. First filled-in school permission form. Dashboard shows progress.
DAY 60
Pre-Entry → Entry 1
Median learner crosses the Adult ESOL Core Curriculum threshold. Caseworkers receive auto-generated outcomes summary.
DAY 90
Work-ready conversation
JCP interview English, payslip vocabulary, escalating to a manager. The council has stopped translating for them.
SHARE IT INTERNALLY
The Britwise Council Brief.
A 7-page executive document for committee papers, procurement files and ESOL-lead briefings. Open it in your browser, or save it as a PDF in two clicks.
Resident door (enter a code) →
REPORTING PACK
Grant-fundable. Member-presentable. Honest.
Every council we work with gets the same outcomes pack — the one we'd want if we were standing in front of an elected members committee asking for renewal.
Learner-level attendance, hours logged, and 90-day progression against Adult ESOL Core Curriculum levels
Cohort-level grant-reporting CSV (AMIF, IF, Move On, Refugee Transitions, Council Tax Reduction outcomes)
Quarterly safeguarding summary (no PII without explicit data-sharing agreement)
DSL-routable transcript export on request, with full audit trail of who accessed what when
Annual outcomes pack formatted for elected-member committee papers
SEAT BLOCKS · PO INVOICING
Block-purchased seats. Paid against a PO. No card capture.
We invoice your finance team on 30-day terms after a signed PO arrives. You can split a block across multiple delivery teams, carry unused seats across financial years, and right-size mid-year.
Standard block
50 seats seats
£4,000 / block
£80 / seat / year (ex VAT)
Bulk-buy 50 seats. Allocate to any resident as you onboard them. One PO, one invoice, no per-individual paperwork.
Bulk block
Buy 100+ seats
From £7,500
From £75 / seat (ex VAT)
Buy in chunks of 50. Volume discount: 100 seats £75, 250 seats £70, 500 seats £65, 1,000+ seats £60. One PO, allocate at your pace.
All prices ex VAT. CCS G-Cloud (Lot 2: Cloud Software) listing in progress. Frameworks: ESPO, YPO, NEPO welcome — speak to commercial.
HOW WE DELIVER
From signed PO to a resident drilling on their phone — in 60 seconds.
The hardest part of any council programme is the last mile: how the service actually lands in a resident's hand. We've designed Britwise to fit your existing distribution channels — caseworkers, welcome packs, GP leaflets, SMS — and to demand exactly zero friction from the resident themselves.
PO signed
Your council admin gets an account at britwise.school/public-sector/login. From there they manage seats, redemption codes, cohorts and reporting.
Redemption codes generated
One code per seat (e.g. BORO-XYZ-7K2P). Short, printable, regeneratable. Bulk-export to CSV for caseworker rolls.
Codes distributed
Caseworker welcome pack · printed card · SMS · email · QR poster in housing/GP/library reception. We provide the print-ready artwork.
Resident opens britwise.school
On any phone. Web app — no App Store install needed. Native iOS + Android apps also available for residents who prefer them.
Picks their first language
Pashto, Arabic, Ukrainian, Tigrinya, Somali, Dari, Farsi or Urdu. The door opens in their own words.
Drilling starts in 60 seconds
No payment, no email signup required. The redemption code IS the account. Designed for the residents least likely to push through friction.
WHAT IF…
Six questions councils always ask, answered straight.
…the resident has no smartphone?
Most resettled adults arrive with a phone (it's the one possession people carry through displacement). For the minority who don't, we work with your refurbished-device partner or local Digital Inclusion programme — and we supply caseworker-assisted print packs as a bridge.
…they can't read in their own language?
Onboarding is voice-first and pictogram-led. The app speaks the prompt in their first language and shows an icon — they never have to read to start. Literacy support is built into the first 10 lessons.
…they have no Wi-Fi at home?
Each lesson is ~5 MB and works on 3G. Lessons cache offline once opened, so they can drill on the bus or in a hostel with patchy signal. Total monthly data usage: ~150 MB.
…they have no digital skills at all?
A caseworker-assisted onboarding flow lets a worker open the app on the resident's phone, enter the code, and pick the first language with them. After that the app is one-tap.
…we need a paper trail for safeguarding?
Council admins can export attendance, hours-logged, and progression at any time. DSL-routable transcript export available on request within one working day. Full audit log of who accessed what when.
…we want to layer this onto our existing ESOL contract?
Most councils do exactly that. Britwise handles the smartphone moments; your classroom ESOL keeps the structured tuition. We'll co-design the handover with your ESOL lead during the briefing.
We don't replace your distribution channels — we plug into them. Caseworkers stay the trusted face of the council. Britwise is the tool they hand over. The first message a resident gets about us is from someone they already trust.
NEXT STEPS
30-minute briefing for your ESOL lead.
We'll walk through the platform, the safeguarding posture, the outcomes pack, and the seat-block options. No deck. No sales theatre. Just answers.
Book the 30-minute briefing
Read our security & safeguarding posture →