Create once use many times - Huntingdonshire District Council

Huntingdonshire District Council completed the first cut of its LLPG in 2002 when it also linked with the NLPG hub. Since that time the LLPG has been maintained and improved and is now considered to be a major asset within the council and is used widely throughout the organisation. The council has an impressive 21 applications that are now supported by the LLPG in one form or another so that across the council, addresses are created and maintained once, but used many times.

Dynamically linked applications include: Development Control, Building Control, Licensing, Listed Buildings, Tree Preservation Orders, Land Charges, Enforcements, Public Access, Property Information Exchange (PIE), a combined application that uses the power of the UPRN to link together information from Development and Building Control along with licensing information, Intranet GIS Gazetteer.

Synchronised users are: Council Tax, Non-Domestic Rates, Electoral Register.

Daily change only updates applications are: Environmental Health, Call Centre, Refuse collection, Community Safety, Housing Grants, Abandoned vehicles.

Other miscellaneous matched datasets are; 22 Registered Social Landlords, Asbestos Register.

Building on this, Huntingdonshire’s LLPG now contains additional property based information derived from formal procedures and on an ad hoc basis. The richness of a LLPG is enhanced significantly by the inclusion of Objects Without a Postal Address (OWPA). Huntingdonshire have already made great strides in this area and continue to add such items on a daily basis, such as: allotments, churches, bridges, bus shelters, lay- bys, post boxes, milestones, war memorials, electricity 19 sub-stations, recreation grounds, pavilions, band stands, in fact almost anything that can be recorded as part of the man-made environment.

Many of the existing Basic BLPUs have alternative LPIs and have been allocated property types broadly based on the Valuation Office Agency’s categories, which have been customised locally. Wards and parishes have also been appended. The LLPG now has more than half a million cross references to Huntingdonshire’s other internal datasets. These efforts have ensured that the gazetteer remains accurate, up to date and an increasingly valuable asset.

Huntingdonshire’s Intranet GIS also benefits from linkage with the LLPG. Several layers of the LLPG data enable addresses to be identified and located providing direct support to the street naming and numbering function. Council tax banding and the annual charge for each property are available via the intranet and viewable on a map, particularly useful in the call centre.

Outcomes

Huntingdonshire’s LLPG has had a direct impact on the council’s service delivery and its internal processes. With more than half a million cross references to other datasets, the LLPG is a rich source of property based information. It is frequently used to produce customised textual and spatial reports and analysis with various permutations of address data by ward, parish, street, postcode and property type. All this has benefited in sharing information with external organisations such as the emergency services, the county council through a joint CRM project and also with links to the district valuation office agency where both council tax and business rates have a 100 per cent match rate. Data cleansing and matching will continue to improve the quality and currency of the gazetteer.

The LLPG team at Huntingdonshire are continually increasing and developing the links between the council’s property and spatial data, with new datasets being referenced in the LLPG. Projects include trying to link property related information held by the council, drawing these together in an effective and efficient method and also working with different sections of the council to develop the ‘richness’ of property data held in the council’s Information systems.

Key benefits

• Consistency of addressing throughout the council.
• There are tangible revenue savings in terms of data management in departments, which are dynamically linked to the gazetteer. An approximate estimate of the savings is £100,000 per annum based on eight, soon to be 10 business systems.
• Increased revenue receipts of approximately £180,000 per annum through elimination of unbilled Non Domestic Rating and Council Tax.
• 100 per cent synchronisation to Council Tax/NDR and the Electoral Register has increased confidence in the LLPG as the authoritative address dataset. The cross matching process identified address and missing property anomalies in internal datasets.
• Wider use has also promoted further data cleansing which in turn improves the quality of the gazetteer.
• Enhances the quality of other internal datasets.
• Provision of property based information and planning applications is now available for public access via the internet.