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Delivering service improvement through addressing: Durham City Council.
The NLPG’s ability to join up address data has opened the door to the enhancement of existing customer services. ‘DurhamCityInfo’ is a walk-in advice centre that allows Durham City Council’s customers to resolve many council enquiries on the spot. Any unresolved queries are referred back to the appropriate council officer using the LLPG to link the query to the relevant information.
Durham’s NLPG-derived service improvements are readily visible in the recently-opened 'Infocentre', which sets out to improve the speed and response of customer service delivery. Based in the Linden Centre, Coxhoe, DurhamCityInfo is a walk-in one-stop shop that provides customers with a council-staffed advice service where they can: pay bills; sort out benefit problems; get help with services including repairs, housing and lettings; and make rent, council tax, housing or benefit enquiries. Using the LLPG within applications and having access to addressing alongside GIS data helps the centre’s customer service staff to resolve a wide range of queries to completion.
The value of maintenance and...
Andrew Young, Durham’s LLPG Custodian said:
"The NLPG has assisted in the development of real service developments such as DurhamCityInfo’, and has also helped to identify previously unbanded properties for council tax and non-domestic rates for the investigation of lost revenues."
...corporate-wide adoption
Andrew understands the benefit of using the LLPG as the authority’s central addressing reference.
"Aside from the national BS7666 standard, a key benefit of adopting the LLPG as a standardised corporate address file is that it traps and lists ‘duplicate’ or ‘alias’ addresses. This means that users have access to a more comprehensive address search. When the LLPG traps and lists alternatives against the definitive LLPG address and unique property referencing, we can see other addresses in other council systems for the same piece of property or land. So, council staff such as those at DurhamCityInfo can have a wide range of access paths to the same master data. The UPRN can also be attached to queries to help with processing."
