London Borough of Harrow uses RM to improve its Address Int.

[TrueBlueTerrier]

London Borough of Harrow uses Royal Mail to improve its Address Intelligence http://www.directionsmag.com/pressrelea ... enc/163396" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Harrow Council in north west London has been using the Royal Mail ‘Return to Sender’(RTS) service to improve the quality of its Local Land and Property Gazetteer (LLPG). The LLPG is a vital corporate resource used increasingly as the single source of addressing by service departments across the council.

Councils mail their residents on a regular basis, to notify changes in service provision, provide up-to-date news and annually for Council Tax. Many Councils use Royal Mail’s RTS, to update their own mailing databases but very often there isn’t the manpower to deal with the returns.

Harrow’s LLPG custodian realised that these items of returned mail were a good source of address intelligence because they came as a result of a postman visiting each address, with each returned item having a label with the reason for non-delivery. In a fast changing borough like Harrow this information could prove very useful. With this in mind a simple solution was found to ensure that this valuable information was used rather than left in boxes of returned mail.

The solution in this case is relatively simple and won the technology award at the 2010 NLPG Exemplar Awards. On large mailings each item of outgoing mail now has a barcode label created in tandem with the normal address label. The barcode contains the UPRN (unique property reference number) for the address.

When RTS items are returned by Royal Mail the barcode is scanned and the reason for the return logged with a single keystroke. Once the returns have been entered, a query list can be produced for further investigation. A return, for example, marked as ‘No such address’ might be a perfectly valid address in the LLPG however the property itself, might in the interim have been converted illegally into flats without planning permission. The return would trigger further investigation and in due course result in a gazetteer update.

The use of the mailings to verify addresses has meant a significant reduction in the number of site visits formerly required to check address queries and has even raised the possibility of using the Royal Mail to answer specific queries in the future.

“This project has been successful in converting what was previously an un-tapped resource into tangible address intelligence,” said Luke Studden, LLPG Custodian at Harrow Council. The solution has been achieved at a very low cost yet delivered a number of significant benefits. By using Royal Mail’s ‘Return To Sender’ service for the council’s large scale mailings we are able to improve our LLPG and Council Tax matching whilst reducing the number of site visits we have to make. All departments that now rely on the LLPG as their single source for addressing will benefit accordingly, as will citizens accessing the ‘My Harrow’ web portal,” continued Studden.

[DGP1]

They pay someone for this crap......................spend the money on essential services not useless jobs (and worthless titles).