It’s not me, it’s you! My break up letter to the UK.
Dear United Kingdom,
It’s official. I have quit the hustle and bustle and have moved to the countryside in Sweden. I have never been one to draw out Goodbyes — I am usually a ‘see you later’ kind of gal. Having moved and left New York where I spent 10 amazing years during my 20’s, to then move and leave Copenhagen after a short 3 years, and finally moving back to London and leaving after another quick 3 years.
Although being born in the UK, I have never felt super close to England — spending the majority of my early adult years in the US I felt more Ameri-tish then anything else. So when I got the opportunity to move back to London I knew it was never a forever move and with the combination of Covid and Brexit, it felt like the need to move on was accelerated quicker than anticipated.
So how do you break up with a country? Of course, as a Service Designer, I took to my new friendship group “Brits in Sweden” on Facebook and did some research and crowd sourced the following information:
-Declare to the tax office
-Inform the council
-Deregister from Doctors (request any Doctors notes)
First things first, declare to the tax office — fill out a P85 final tax form on leaving the uk with HMRC.. easy enough. Using the Government Gateway code and let them know I have left. It was all going well until surprisingly I was faced with this issue…
Be More Accessible! GDS usually have great accessibility which is why I was a little shocked that I could not enter my new International address using Swedish Characters. This is my first time with this type of rejection — my partner who has the unfortunate ‘ä’ letter in his last name — has on numerous occasions not been able to check-in early for flights, as the passport name doesn’t match the name on the booking (as they do not accept Swedish Characters). Tut tut.
So that was done. Albeit with some fundamental design flaws.
Next. Inform the council of my departure.
Perfect click on that link which takes me to Hackney main website. I simply type in Moving Abroad as per Gov.uk website to be shown.. not a lot..
Finally I found where I needed to go and was immediately stopped by a big green box declaring a disruption due to a serious cyberattack…
As a Service Designer you have to think beyond the product, what are those things surrounding that product (the service) that need to be put into place to help a user complete a task. Me as a user has one task to complete “Inform the Government I am moving abroad”. As a user it is frustrating to be on one Government website (GOV.uk) that is linked out to another Government website (Hackney.gov.uk) and not even be linked to the right page. A Service Designer would be thinking through all of the journeys and making the user experience seamless from one touchpoint (website/form) to another.
Looks like I will have to continue with this one later.
Finally on the list… Deregister from Doctors (request any Doctors notes). Surprisingly this was the easiest of the three as I am registered with GP at Hand which means everything can be done online or through a simply phone call. I declared I am moving abroad and would like access to my patient record. Easy. As a Service Designer I was particularly happy with this touchpoint (which is why I went with GP at Hand in the first place), no need to have to go into the Doctor practice as in my case the practice is online.
With all that partially done — there is only one thing left to do…
Wave to the queen on my way out!
Kind Regards,
Leila.
Leila Byron 