Adur and Worthing Councils Save Money by Sharing Services

LONDON, ENGLAND, February 09, 2013 (Press-News.org) Adur District and Worthing Borough Councils are delivering a better service to the tax payer, whilst generating significant savings through shared services.

By amalgamating services employed across the two councils, and in particular creating one combined street naming and numbering (SNN) policy, they have reduced lengthy paperwork, are better able to collaborate with other council departments and have improved the methods by which the public can make a request for a change to the street naming or numbering of a property or road.

Prior to the development of the project, neither Adur nor Worthing Council could offer a developer, business owner or property owner an official policy detailing all aspects of their SNN practice.

In order to develop the single policy they reviewed all the SNN processes and procedures in place across both councils and used the feedback from consultations to implement a single working practice.

Other council policies were analysed, as were service requirements and the legislation adopted by the councils. To encourage policy adoption across the business, the councils' aims were publicised in the local media and public feedback was invited, and they liaised with all stakeholders including other local authorities, council services such as Planning, other key services, Members, council staff, Legal and Finance teams.

Implementation of a single policy has raised and increased awareness of the councils' SNN statutory duty, processes and charging policy for a wide audience. The project was implemented without disruption to day-to-day operations and has resulted in costs savings of GBP28,000.

Speaking of the new policy, Corporate Information Manager at Adur and Worthing Councils, Gill Van-Eetvelt said, "Moving to a shared service is not an easy thing to do, but we always knew that the rewards would be there in both efficiency and cost savings."

"As a result of the policy, and through collaboration with the planning department, details of SNN processes can now be sent out to all applicants. This has resulted in developers proactively contacting the council during the early stages of a build to register for the SNN service, making it easier for them and saving the councils both time and money"

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GeoPlace is a public sector limited liability partnership between the Local Government Association and Ordnance Survey. GeoPlace's role is to create and maintain the National Address Gazetteer and the National Street Gazetteer for England and Wales, providing definitive sources of publicly-owned spatial address and street data for Great Britain. Through agreement with Scotland's Improvement Service Company, coverage has been extended to include Scotland'.