Blackpool has created one of the country's most up to date geographic databases of land, street and properties.  Using systems supplied by GGP, Blackpool is seeing substantial rewards as local services benefit from easier access to centralised council information. 

Blackpool, the UK's top holiday destination, has been one of the forerunners of the National Land and Property Gazetteer (NPLG); a nationwide initiative to create a definitive database of all properties in the country.  Blackpool's NLPG database has eliminated the need to maintain seven of the council's key datasets; saving the council £750,000 since the data was consolidated.

One of the key spin-offs is a corporate CRM whose operation is based on the NLPG dataset. Citizens now get a variety of information at one point instead of having to visit different sites. As well as boosting service levels, this has given significant savings.

"The CRM has enabled the Council to deal with a lot of low level queries at one site, enabling us to shut reception areas at different sites and so saving staff time and building costs. And it means experienced members of staff no longer need to attend counter calls to deal with basic queries thus saving expensive staff time" comments Louise Bache, ICT Officer at Blackpool Council.

Blackpool's website also provides live NLPG-linked address look-ups that greatly enhance searches, allowing staff and citizens to get to the information they need quickly.  With added mapping and department information online, a host of online services are being evolved including Blackpool4Me and schools admission registration.

"GGP's solutions are central to our corporate IT and are very effective in managing mapping, the NLPG and geographic records.  The GGP NGz gazetteer management system has saved us an enormous amount of time in data processing and is ideal for managing the NLPG.  Ease of use and ease of integration are big assets of GGP's solutions, which have enabled big gains in efficiency with significant financial rewards to Blackpool" says Louise Bache.