New method of saving money in local authorities

Online, May 16, 2010 (Newswire.com) - Woking, Surrey 16th May 2010 - With public sector budgets being dramatically slashed, gazetteer-specialists Aligned Assets can provide a quick, simple and very cost-effective solution to enable large savings in council expenditure.

With its SinglePoint product, it can allow local authorities that currently hold numerous, disparate address databases to have all departments access their local land and property gazetteers (LLPG) via easy to use web services.

The considerable savings are made through the removal of the excessive licensing costs that come from holding many separate datasets, with the reduction in the time it takes to manage one database as opposed to many leading to further cost savings.

SinglePoint was originally designed for use in the British Transport Police to give them sub-second access to the full 32 million records of the National Land and Property Gazetteer (NLPG), but is now available throughout the public sector. Departments from customer services and education, through to waste management and revues & benefits can all benefit from access to the council's most definitive and accurate source of address data.

In addition to the direct savings that will come from the removal of unnecessary licensing, by enabling all departments access the LLPG as the single source of addresses, significant gains in efficiency will also be seen. Not only will the misidentification of properties between departments be a thing of the past, but all changes in the address data, such as new developments, will be instantly accessible to all.

This latter point becomes ever more critical when one considers that in some instances up to two thirds of a council's net expenditure will be covered by council tax revenue. With the average council tax bill standing at over £1200, the ability to identify and invoice ALL new properties is clearly an advantage. Since it is a statutory requirement for all new properties to be entered into the LLPG, the advantages of linking to it are clearly evident.

SinglePoint can also be used to give corporate access to the full NLPG, enabling 'out of area' searching, which is crucial for those council departments who work with people coming into their area such as leisure and tourism.

One local authority who is using SinglePoint to give corporate access to the full NLPG is Cardiff Council. Matthew Seymour, Senior Gazetteer Officer explained, "By using the NLPG corporately, Cardiff stand to save approximately £40,000 in licensing costs over the next 12 months and it's SinglePoint that has facilitated this."

He went on to say, "SinglePoint has three main benefits - firstly it compiles the entire NLPG into one, single database. Secondly it easily receives change only updates from the National Hub, which means all departments have new address data far quicker than then did through previous suppliers. Thirdly, the web services mean that our corporate ICT team can very quickly create links into new systems using approved ICT standards."

Speaking of SinglePoint, Managing Director of Aligned Assets, Dinesh Thanigasalam said, "Almost one in ten local authorities already use our web services to give corporate access to the LLPG or NLPG. Each local authority spent considerable sums of money to create their gazetteers and through SinglePoint they can start to see a real return on that investment."

To find out more visit www.aligned-assets.co.uk/singlepoint

ABOUT ALIGNED ASSETS
Aligned Assets are an industry leader in gazetteer and address management solutions. They supply software to over 100 Local Authorities and Fire & Rescue Services as well as the British Transport Police and Transport for London. They are the UK's first reseller of the NLPG, providing superior address management across the commercial and public sectors. In addition to software and data solutions they can offer a complete range of consultancy, training, bespoke development and project management.