Why GOV.UK Dropped jQuery
GOV.UK's engineering team has documented its decision to remove jQuery from the site's front-end code. The move was detailed in two posts: first, an explanation of the reasoning, and then a follow-up with performance metrics after criticism that the library's file size no longer matters much given modern networks and caching.
The primary motivation wasn't bandwidth. It was maintenance. With jQuery scattered across the codebase in various states and versions, the team faced piecemeal security patches and upgrades. Removing the dependency shrinks that footprint and eliminates a recurring source of technical debt. The team's internal documentation on how to remove jQuery offers a practical migration guide for other projects facing the same challenge.
This isn't a call to strip libraries from existing projects. Legacy codebases and outdated browser requirements can make that impractical. But GOV.UK's approach is a useful case study in periodically reassessing whether a tool still earns its place — a process that improves developer experience and long-term maintainability.
The work follows a similar effort at GitHub, which documented its own incremental decoupling from jQuery. Both projects share a common thread: knowing when a dependency has outlived its usefulness, and having the discipline to remove it systematically rather than letting it linger.
