Providing access to services online

London Borough of Brent was one of the first authorities to leverage the benefits of the NLPG via its website, and to pass on those benefits directly to customers. Its online ‘Brent Property Lookup’ service uses the council’s LLPG to link a variety of data and present them in one collated view. The search engine uses the LLPG as its address layer, and presents back to the user a range of results from council systems specific to that address. The service also links to non-council services such as water suppliers, Land Registry and National Statistics.

Brent Property Lookup allows residents to locate address-specific council services and information such as council tax rates and property description; waste and recycling information; councillor, MP, ward, polling stations details; street mapping centred on the grid co-ordinate of the property; ‘where’s my nearest’ facilities; and information held on a property from the unitary development plan.

Jay Patel, Brent’s Database Manager said:

‘The benefits from this service are considerable considering it can be set up with little technical difficulty. Whilst eliminating duplicate and inconsistent data entries, the LLPG has provided us with a way of integrating systems seamlessly across the council – as well as with external partners – to develop informed decision-making systems. These include an emergency evacuation application with the police to plan the best evacuation methodology."

Across the council, systems such as the CRM, council tax, electoral register, libraries, planning, building regulations, environmental health, health and safety, licensing, complaints and other services all use the efficiency of the LLPG to log service requests or applications.