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Delivering service improvement through addressing: Amber Valley Borough Council.
At Amber Valley Borough Council, recognition of the importance of addressing has contributed to the development of new services such as ‘MyProperty’, an online facility that provides valuable, property-linked information for the council’s customers.
The importance of addressing
Empowering citizens and improving social inclusion through technology are key aims of the Government’s modernisation agenda. One local initiative that is meeting these objectives is Amber Valley’s MyProperty, an online service for residents.
MyProperty provides a search facility to council information held for every property and address in the council’s LLPG. All the information is linked together via the NLPG’s unique referencing and is presented in a single online environment. The service was created and designed in-house using standard web and database technologies.
To find information on their home or an address, citizens need only visit the council’s website and make a search. When the LLPG address for the property appears, valuable information and mapping specific to the property are presented.
Andy Wilde, Information Development Manager and e-Champion Officer at the council. said:
"Our LLPG has really captured our imagination. We intend to link any public information that has a UPRN against it or where we can point at the LLPG address or co-ordinates. By placing that information online, we are transferring the benefits directly to our clients. It really is a data-rich framework."
What information is available?
With over 150 users per week, MyProperty is an ideal way for customers new to the borough or new to an address to locate essential services for their address. It also provides them with data-rich access to the planning process: they can download individual applications and even access recorded minutes to planning meetings that relate to the applications.
MyProperty provides a wealth of information:
- Property specific such as council tax banding and annual charges; planning history and refuse collection dates.
- Constraint data such as ‘is the property in a conservation area or smoke control-zone?’.
- Information on local democracy, for example, contact details of parish, ward and councillor clinic times.
- Nearby council services such as recycling sites.
- Nearby services provided by non-council agencies such as sports facilities or local schools.
- Mapping provided courtesy of the Derbyshire Partnership.
Joining-up address data
MyProperty has been enabled by the foundation work carried out in creating the authority’s LLPG, and its subsequent linking to internal systems. The benefits of viewing related property data, namely:
- Authoritative and standardised addressing.
- Reduced duplication of effort.
- Easy linking of related data.
- Integration of addressing.
- Mapping and imagery.
were first embedded internally within the authority. Then, the Amber Valley team went about making the same benefits available to the public.
Andy explained:
"At present planning, building control, land charges, environmental health, council tax and non-domestic ratings lists, land terrier and other minor systems such as customer comments are directly linked to the LLPG. We also have external links complete with the register of electors. Our organic deployment of the LLPG meant that we were collecting address data for the authority and that all the systems included a UPRN. The value of viewing this information all together, based on authoritative addressing, was extremely powerful. It was the logical step to transfer those benefits more widely by making it available online."
