GGP Software Helps Blaby Transform Council Geo-Data

Croydon, UK, 23 March 2010 - Blaby District Council has transformed the quality and currency of address records following the implementation of gazetteer management software from GGP Systems. Since the introduction of GGP NGz the Council has leapt a staggering 273 places in performance ratings and was recently presented with an award for 'Most Improved' at a national awards ceremony. The database - the Local Land and Property Gazetteer (LLPG) - will now be used to provide an up to date, accurate and consistent address for every household in the Leicestershire authority helping improve the delivery of a range of frontline services.

Newly introduced UK government legislation raised the profile of the LLPG within Blaby bringing to the fore issues relating to the currency and accuracy of the data. With support from senior management a project team undertook a review of the processes used to create and maintain the data and explored its wider use within the Council. "One of the issues that we discovered was that because the LLPG data was out of date errors were being corrected in frontline service applications, such as our planning system, rather than at source," commented Jo Hickling, Planning Systems Officer.

"We had two options open to us. We could either continue entering and correcting data in the planning system and use this as a database management tool or we could use software specifically developed for the job," continued Jo Hickling. "We decided to go with GGP NGz as it was a proven and stable solution and had a dedicated support team essential if we were to move forward with the project to transform our address resource."

GGP NGz software, as used by Blaby Council, has been specifically developed to ensure a consistent, up to date and accurate base for all property-based information within the organisation. GGP NGz also manages the import and export of data between the local authority databases and the NLPG, the national hub, and the complete product suite was one of the first two software solutions to receive accreditation for address data transfer (DTF 7.3) and is fully compliant with BS7666.

Blaby District Council was recently recognised, for the hard work, innovation, and commitment demonstrated with the improvement in their address database winning the 2009 MLPG Exemplar Award for Most Improved. The award was presented to Blaby at a ceremony that formed part of the NLPG 'Underpinning Transformational Government' conference which took place at the Victoria Park Plaza in London in December 2009.

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