West Oxfordshire Voted Overall 'Exemplar'

This was the first occasion where conference delegates participated in an interactive vote based on the presentations of the different award category winners. Earlier, West Oxfordshire had won the Citizen Award, cited as the best example of a project delivering services to citizens for its new waste and recycling provision.

The West Oxfordshire project introduces alternating fortnightly collections of household refuse and free garden waste together with weekly collections of recycling and food waste. It makes extensive use of the NLPG to link data from different Council systems to build a single customer database that underpins the new services. By matching the NLPG to existing waste and refuse data and then linking it to the Council's CRM system, it was possible to target and personalise mailings to all of the Councils 46,000 residential addresses.

Customers phoning to report missed bin collections are identified by the systems initiating an appropriate response. Customers can also use online forms on the Council Website a popular choice with over 9,000 citizens choosing to use this method to sign up for the new services on offer.

"We are delighted to win the Citizen Exemplar Award and receiving the Overall Exemplar Award is the ultimate accolade because it was voted for by our peers working in Local Authorities from all over the country," said Sarah Turner Business Solutions Manager at West Oxfordshire District Council.

The NLPG is the definitive address list for England and Wales, created and maintained on a daily basis by and for local government but also used by fire and rescue services, police forces and others to link their information and systems to improve services, boost efficiency and reduce costs.

Click here to see the full list of winners, read the write-up and case study and also view the photographs from the event.

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Notes to editors:

The NLPG is a joint venture between all local authorities in England and Wales, the Local Government Information House, part of the Local Government Group and Intelligent Addressing Limited.

Intelligent Addressing is an information management specialist and data provider, focusing on land and property data, particularly addresses. As well as being the joint venture partner with local government in the development of the NLPG, IA also manages the national datasets for local government; the NLPG and the National Street Gazetteer (NSG). Data is an essential yet high-cost resource to maintain. IA helps organisations find, utilise and manage the information that they need and provides services to any organisation that depends on the accuracy, manageability and versatility of its information.

Local Government Information House is part of the Local Government Group. LGIH concentrates on core projects that have maximum benefit for the whole of local government. To this end, LGIH focuses on geographical information-related projects, as the standardisation of this type of data affects more than 80 per cent of what local government does. LGIH acts as an intermediary between the public and the private sector enabling it to negotiate with private companies on behalf of local authorities in order to provide key parts of a technical infrastructure for improved service delivery.