West Sussex NLPG system addresses litter curse

22 June 2010, 12:46pm

AXESS West Sussex, a partnership of County, District and Borough Councils in the UK, is using the latest technology combining online maps, SMS text messaging and handheld mobile devices to help tackle fly tipping and litter in Crawley. The National Land and Property Gazetteer (NLPG) – the definitive land and property database for England and Wales is at the heart of this Award-winning project to transform street cleaning in West Sussex. Through improving communications between citizens and the council, tens of thousands of pounds worth of savings plus tangible improvements in operational efficiency and service delivery have been realised.

“The project is about improving business processes and using the technology we have where appropriate to make the interaction between customer and service provider fast, easy and accessible,” commented Michala Sterling, Project Manager, AXESS West Sussex. “From the citizen’s point of view that means getting hold of council information quickly and easily and for the Council it means maximising investments already made to achieve measurable savings, improvements in performance and an increase in customer satisfaction.”

The project is designed to help communication between the community and council through the use of readily accessible technology such as online reporting and SMS text messaging. By streamlining the flow of data received by the council, it can be automatically directed to the relevant service provider. This reduces unnecessary administration, improves the efficiency of incident reporting and resolution, in turn leading to cleaner, greener and safer streets.

“The NLPG has played an essential part in the realisation of the project,” continued Sterling. “A unique and geographically accurate address database ensures incidents are recorded at the precise location reducing duplication of reports due to ambiguous descriptions and helping service providers locate incidents in a timely fashion.”

The NLPG is owned and created by all local authorities in England and Wales. It lists and locates more than 32 million residential, business and non-mailing addresses each with a unique property reference number (UPRN). The UPRN provides a reference key to join related address records across different datasets such as the electoral register.

Intelligent Addressing contact: Gayle Gander, Head of Marketing, +44(0)207 747 3500, E-mail: ggander@intelligent-addressing.co.uk, www.intelligent-addressing.co.uk

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