Council Portal Rescue

The Challenge

When I joined this project, the UK council's recycling permit system was in crisis. The previous development team had abandoned the project, leaving behind a Laravel 8 application with 0% test coverage and severe architectural issues.

The codebase revealed multiple critical issues:

• • Massive code duplication - Same logic repeated 20+ times across controllers
• • No validation - Users could submit empty forms or invalid data
• • Race conditions - Multiple permits issued to same address
• • N+1 query problems - Pages taking 10+ seconds to load
• • Hard-coded values - Permit types and prices embedded throughout

The Solution

I implemented a systematic rescue operation focusing on stability first, then optimization.

// This pattern repeated in 20+ controllers
public function store(Request $request) {
    $permit = new Permit();
    $permit->address = $request->address;
    $permit->type = $request->type;
    $permit->status = 'pending';
    // ... 50 more lines of assignments
    $permit->save();
}

public function store(PermitRequest $request, PermitService $service) {
    return DB::transaction(function() use ($request, $service) {
        return $service->createPermit($request->validated());
    });
}

Key improvements implemented:

• • Service layer architecture - Extracted business logic into reusable services
• • Database transactions - Prevented duplicate permits with atomic operations
• • Request validation - Created 15 custom validation rules
• • Query optimization - Reduced page loads from 10s to 300ms
• • PHPUnit test suite - Achieved 85% code coverage

Before vs After

Technology Stack

Client Feedback

"Robin pulled off what we thought was impossible. With less than 48 hours until launch, he transformed our failing system into a stable, tested platform that handled our entire district's permit applications flawlessly." — Digital Services Manager, UK Council