Using the NLPG could save councils £24m per year

It would also help with the delivery of shared services

Cross-referencing police information with NLPG will lead to cost savings

Making more use of the National Land and Property Gazetteer (NLPG) could save local councils between £15m and £24m per year, according to a local government report.

The report, The Value of Geospatial Information to Local Public Service Delivery in England and Wales, published by the Local Government Group, looks at the economic benefits of the use of geospatial data on service delivery.

All councils are now making some use of the NLPG, which is made up of all the Local Land and Property Gazetteers (LLPGs).

The LLPGs are datasets containing information on all the properties within a local council's area. These are collated by the local councils themselves. However, distribution of services within a local area will also rely on information that comes from outside that area.

Examples of this would be where people move house and rely on benefits, and where people have criminal records or some history with a different police force. This information can be garnered from the NLPG – which is also important for the delivery of shared services between councils.

A spokesman for the NLPG said that it was easy for local councils to update their systems and make them interact more thoroughly with the central system. “The vendors of the GIS (Geospatial Information System) – a system used by local councils – and others will all have new versions of their system that are ready to be taken up, and it is a matter of spending money on these in order to save money in the medium term.”

In 2008 and 2009 the use of geospatial data within local government resulted in savings of £320m, and this could rise to £560m by 2014 to 2015.

These savings were made in a number of ways that include better sharing of data and services, more intelligent use of location-based data – for example to offer customer insight route optimisation, and asset management, in addition the data enabled better online support – and the possibility of self-service.