Financially proving the case for better addressing

Savings and efficiencies are critical for every authority. Addressing is not a panacea, but a coordinated programme that integrates accurate address data can provide valuable insights into many of the most complex challenges authorities face today, challenges that are often difficult to untangle. Crucially, the return on investment must be demonstrated from the outset. Without clear financial evidence of benefit, it becomes far harder to secure the support and buy-in of decision-makers.

By knowing where a problem is – by ensuring the Local Land and Property Gazetteer (LLPG) is used as an integrated resource –seemingly disparate departments within an authority can achieve mutually beneficial outcomes of many kinds. Not least, savings across the board; reductions in risk; and improved customer service. What’s key, is the integration of accurate addressing. By using the Unique Property Reference Numbers (UPRNs) for each record within the LLPG, accurate addressing can be used to integrate departmental datasets across the council.

At Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council, that joined up thinking wasn’t in place until a new programme of work identified the need for greater consistency and integration of address data across the authority.

Tameside Council sits on the edge of Greater Manchester, bordering the Peak District. Like many authorities, it faces the challenge of managing a diverse landscape, from dense town centres and suburban neighbourhoods to river valleys and upland areas. Its responsibilities—planning, transport, social care, waste management, and education—are complex and interconnected, all focused on delivering efficiency, value for money, and a high quality of life for residents However, the authority had recognised that fragmented address data was hindering its allocation of resources and the efficiency of its operations. The authority’s LLPG had also dipped below the national performance benchmarks, which showed there was room for improvement.

With that in mind, Tameside prompted a digital transformation overhaul, asking its geospatial team to focus on estimating the value of leveraging address data and UPRNs for better integration across its service proposition.

At that time, Tameside had about 155,000 UPRNs.  The team started by embedding the LLPG function – containing those UPRNs – within its Planning Service: ensuring the benefits of good addressing were understood, and that functions were easily accessible for teams handling day-to-day planning application process and decision-making.

The new focus helped move the council's LLPG indicators to Gold Status. But for even better results, a dedicated digital transformation project team was created with senior sponsorship from finance and information governance to support the next step, which included a Return on Investment Study of address integration covering 12 different service areas.

With support from GeoPlace, ConsultingWhere conducted an exercise that would show how well addressing was used across the authority, and what value a deeper integration of UPRNs and the LLPG improvements might deliver. 

The ROI study was a welcomed activity. Some areas, such as council tax and customer relationship management, presented challenges due to external systems or in-progress procurements, but in others, such as building control, progress was made quickly. One particularly effective piece of work was a day of ‘service speed dating’ — short meetings with service areas to explore how each one used address data. This alone helped surface quick wins, technical challenges that might prevent speedy progress, and the identification of many shared addressing needs across the authority.

What emerged overall was far more than a clear technical picture. The study was then able to produce a quantified, easy to understand case for investing in better addressing right across the authority.

Outcomes

The clarity of GeoPlace’s national benchmarking standards helped the team to track and report progress, and from a corporate perspective, the study also provided a valuable framework for workstreams that were already aligned to tangible, achievable outcomes. Potential savings and efficiencies identified included:

• up to 5% savings in social care, by using location-based systems to better allocate resources and optimise routing for children’s and adults' services
• up to 10% savings in waste management, by dynamically updating collection routes. Reducing duplication and missed opportunities, increasing trade waste collection, ensuring new builds were added — potentially deferring costly vehicle replacements
• an estimated 10% cost reduction for school transport, by using UPRNs to match eligibility assessments with dynamic routing.

After an internal senior management review, the strength of that business case created helped Tameside to plan embedding data integration in four areas, over a 12-month period and identify potential for longer-term change in almost all the service areas covered by the study.

Graham Holland, Strategic Lead for Planning, Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council said: 

“Through this ROI study, we’ve engaged with waste, social care, and housing – raised awareness of what we do right across the organisation: there’s much better recognition around the value of UPRNs, and depts are saying ‘how can you help us more?’  Graham continued: “What was really valuable, was how this ROI study let us put financial values on transformation, which we could then present to our business partners. Specifically, the business rates element of this exercise demonstrated that the authority could achieve more income and huge direct returns on investment.”