A branch question

hi everyone

I have found a solution which may not be the best so I’m asking it here to see if I get a different solution from the wizards group. :)

I have a number of repos that were converted from svn to git. After the conversion the branches that contained each release were named something like “branches/version_<version-number>”. We want to modify the repo so the branches are named something like “release/<version-number>”. 

I currently do a command sequence like this:
git checkout <existing-branch>
git branch -m <existing-branch> <new-branch>
git push origin :<old-branch>
git push origin <new-branch>
Then I do a:
git checkout master
git branch -D <new-branch>
to cleanup my local area.

Note: These branches are only kept for historical purposes and not modified except occasionally the latest release may have an update so fix a bug.

Finally, as we move forward, what is the accepted best practice for doing a release?

Thanks in advance for your collective wisdom.

Best,
J. R.