Polaris Software and the business of getting paperwork out of the way

A café table on a pavement has a secret life. Before anyone sits down, there may be an application, supporting documents, a payment, an approval and an inspection. Each step is small. Put them in different inboxes and the table acquires a second occupation: generating work for the council.

Polaris Software sells the connections between those steps. Its territory includes highway permits, parking, offence processing and police operational records. These are services people encounter when something needs permission, payment or proof. The company’s proposition is practical: let the information travel with the task, so staff spend less time copying it around.

The group says its software serves 45 local authorities and nearly all UK police forces across its portfolio. That breadth conceals considerable specialisation. A council licensing desk and a police armoury have different customers, rules and consequences. Polaris has assembled businesses that know those differences, then placed them under common ownership.

01 / THE BOTTLENECKThe form was already digital. The work wasn’t.

Brighton & Hove offers a useful corrective to the idea that putting a service online finishes the job. According to a Polaris case study, the council previously used another digital system alongside paper processes. Applications still moved slowly, information needed retyping and staff faced avoidable opportunities for error.

The council adopted StarGo, Polaris’s highways licensing software. The published result is striking but specific: processing time fell by 98% for new applications and renewals involving A-boards, tables and chairs, and shop displays. The same case study reports 20% more highway licences processed in the first year. Those are supplier-published customer results, with a defined administrative scope.

Kent’s difficulty was more visibly analogue. More than 5,000 annual highway licence applications passed through forms, email and spreadsheets. The council wanted applications, payments and approvals connected. Its published case study reports 32% higher licensing cost recovery after the change.

“Processing licences via email and post and inputting data onto spreadsheets was time-consuming and antiquated.”

Kent County Council spokesperson
Quoted in Polaris’s customer case study

These examples point to a copyable lesson: follow the work beyond the public form. If a person must copy the submission into another system, chase its payment and reconstruct its history, the attractive opening screen has left much of the problem intact.

02 / STREET LEVELThree views of the same pavement

StarGo divides a permit’s life between three interfaces. Applicants submit and pay online. Council staff review the information in a management portal. Inspectors check permit status in the field. The product supports applications for skips, scaffolding, café seating and other uses of the highway, with renewal reminders and integration into the Department for Transport’s Street Manager.

Liberator covers a broader collection of local-government services. Its modules include market-pitch booking, pavement permissions, parking and environmental enforcement. A particularly revealing detail is its support for cycle hangars: users can find locations, join waiting lists, receive alerts and obtain electronic keys. Government software extends right down to where someone keeps a bicycle.

In Polaris’s Westminster case study, Liberator supports services including parking suspensions, market trading and road closures. The attraction is the shared view: staff can access an applicant’s account, while users receive reminders and follow-ups. Mobile access takes those records beyond the office.

The product range makes Polaris a specialist government-software supplier, with the public using its portals through the purchasing authority. The buyer is paying for an administrative process that serves several kinds of user, each with a different job to finish.

03 / THE CASE FILEAfter the camera clicks

A captured traffic offence starts another chain of work. StarTraq DOME, short for Dynamic Offence Management and Enforcement, takes evidence from cameras, handheld devices and paper ticketing into back-office processing. It manages records, correspondence and progression towards outcomes such as payment, driver education or court proceedings.

Polaris’s Metropolitan Police case study reports a 147% increase in speeding and red-light offences processed during the first year. It also records an estimate that handling the same volume without DOME would have required roughly 24 additional staff. The operational claim concerns processing capacity; it should not be read as a measured reduction in collisions.

That distinction matters when assessing enforcement technology. A faster case pipeline describes what an organisation can handle. Assessing the public outcome requires another set of measures. Polaris’s software sits where evidence becomes administration, and the quality of that administration matters alongside its speed.

Chronicle addresses a different part of policing. Its armoury software records equipment issue, return and maintenance, with RFID technology linking into access controls. Officer competence and authorisation records help determine who may access equipment. Other modules cover areas including dog training and drone operations.

Here, the record is part of the control. Knowing where equipment went, who received it and whether their qualifications remain current gives the system a purpose beyond counting inventory. It also explains why domain knowledge matters: the relevant unit of work is often an authorised action, with a person and a history attached.

04 / THE ASSEMBLYA new name for experienced businesses

Polaris’s 2024 group launch followed a series of transactions. August Equity invested in StarTraq in May 2023. Farthest Gate, the business behind Liberator, joined that September. The acquisition of JML Software Solutions, the provider of Chronicle, was announced in January 2024. Investec subsequently disclosed additional debt facilities supporting the JML purchase.

Chief executive Kevin McCallum described the shared-brand project in a July 2024 LinkedIn post. On joining the combined businesses, he had made a common purpose an early priority. Those businesses already had lengthy customer histories; the new identity gave employees and customers a name for the group being assembled.

Clarity Information Solutions followed in October 2024, adding road-safety software including ticket management, speed-awareness course bookings, school cycling programmes and collision records supporting civil litigation. The sequence broadened what the group could supply to organisations already buying related services.

Its leadership also reflects those markets. Local-authority divisional head Anil Mahendra previously led a highways digital-change programme at Westminster. Police divisional head Richard Gorringe came from Jenoptik UK, where he held finance and managing-director roles. McCallum previously led Bright Software Group and held a senior commercial role at FreeAgent.

The company says colleagues helped create its values. Among the more concrete expectations are acknowledging mistakes, challenging respectfully and avoiding unnecessary meetings. Those are stated working principles, rather than a verdict on employee experience. They do, however, fit a business whose customer proposition depends on reducing administrative friction.

05 / THE INVOICEThe software has a meter of its own

Polaris earns money through software and service contracts with public bodies. Its published procurement offers show that pricing varies by product and scope. A StarGo Digital Marketplace listing gives an annual price of £4,410 per licence. A separate DOME pricing schedule starts at £11.70 per issued fixed penalty notice, with a minimum annual commitment of 500.

Under that DOME schedule, the charge applies whether the recipient pays the notice or not. Setup, configuration and training are separate, while supplier-managed Azure hosting adds £3,160 annually. At the minimum notice volume, those two recurring components total £9,010. The arithmetic describes that offer, not the price of an entire police deployment.

For buyers, the practical comparison therefore includes volumes, implementation and the work staff must still perform. Polaris’s StarGo listing describes project milestones, user acceptance testing and training. Buying the licence begins an implementation; an organisation still has to make the process usable for its people.

06 / THE CONNECTIONLet the driver choose the app

Westminster’s multi-app parking scheme shows another use for Polaris’s integration expertise. The company built a connection allowing RingGo, JustPark and PayByPhone to register and query parking sessions. Drivers gained a choice of payment app while the council could work with the information behind those transactions.

The scheme’s advertised £1.2 million annual council saving needs context. Westminster Labour’s announcement explains that parking transaction costs previously covered through council tax would shift to service users. The figure describes a change in the commercial arrangement, as well as the technology enabling it. It is not simply a software productivity saving.

Polaris competes in a market with established alternatives. NEC’s ASSURE Licensing also offers applications, renewals and public self-service; Civica supplies enforcement software. Polaris’s distinctive combination spans street permissions, offence administration and police operational controls. That combination gives it several routes into a public-sector customer, without establishing that every module will be the best fit.

07 / ACROSS THE ATLANTICThe American buyer was already a user

In December 2025, Polaris acquired Massachusetts-based Sitestream, whose managed traffic-safety programmes already used Polaris technology. August Equity described the transaction as bringing five companies under the group’s umbrella. The existing software relationship gave the expansion a practical starting point: an American operator familiar with the platform.

The next chapter has named customers. Sitestream announced a Windsor Locks, Connecticut, programme in August 2026, with active enforcement anticipated in the first quarter of 2027 after a warning period. The announcement describes planned camera locations requiring state approval. It is an implementation ahead, rather than an already-delivered safety result.

The lesson for other software businesses is worth separating from the acquisition appetite. Polaris has pursued adjacent tasks and relationships it can understand: another council service, another stage in an offence process, an overseas operator already using its system. Each addition still has to work for the person handling the next case.

That is also the condition attached to the pitch. Connected software needs usable records, workable rules and staff who can operate it. Automating a confused process can move the confusion faster. Polaris’s most persuasive examples concern a concrete task becoming easier to complete. Somewhere, a café owner wants to put two chairs outside. The council should be able to answer.