In 2023, Nottingham City Council and GeoPlace worked with the independent strategy advisors ConsultingWhere, to undertake a Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA) of the benefits of using geocoded address and street data. Following ConsultingWhere’s national study of the Return On Investment (ROI) in the previous year, the consultants were able to apply experience gained from that work to validate the results more robustly at a local level. The in-depth study shows that Nottingham City Council is yielding impressive returns from its investment in geocoded address and street data and the use of that data across the organisation.
The council generated an estimated ROI of over 4:1 between 2018 and 2022. That indicates a Net Present Value (NPV) of an estimated £4.1 million – the difference between the present value of cash inflows and the present value of cash outflows. These returns can be increased over the period 2023-6 by continuing with the proactive approach to maintaining and upgrading such data and creating integrations to a wider range of functions.
As a step-change in functionality, by integrating UPRNs and USRNs, this study shows the value of different departments utilising authoritative address and street data. The study looked at the value of data integration in reducing duplicate effort of data maintenance and then focused on estimating the value realised by 6 specific areas:
- Data integration, the total impact of integrating addressing data from 2018 to 2026 using the UPRN is estimated to be around £2.4 million.
- Collection of business rates, with an impact at an estimated uplift of £6.2 million in newly-identified business rates.
- Children’s social care and early help services, the total impact of investing in better addressing will be an estimated increase of £0.4 million.
- Safer housing, the overall efficiency gain to the council for licensing and enforcement is in the range of £215,000 per annum.
- Waste management, the total impact over the period 2018 - 2026 is estimated at £0.6 million.
- Workplace parking levy, a conservative estimate suggests that the direct savings would be at least £5,000 per annum.
Other social and environmental benefits were identified but not quantified at this time including:
- Electoral registration
- Planning
- Climate change, including net zero neighbourhood proposal, retrofit and energy assessment.
In future, the existing gains are expected to be supplemented by added value from social care data management, improved energy conservation and further new revenue from identifying properties where business rates are not being collected. It is estimated that the benefits will generate a NPV of £5.7 million over the period 2023-2026. This would represent an enhanced ROI of approximately 8.5:1. Over the whole period from 2018-26, the total net benefits after applying the Treasury Discount Rate are expected to be £9.8 million representing an overall ROI of just over 6:1, but equally significant are insights supporting decision making in key council strategic initiatives including climate change adaptation. As only a sample of use cases were quantified these figures represent a conservative estimate of the Return on Investment
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Nottingham City Council's return on investment analysis
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