Shropshire Council: Lessons from successful LGR

As the deadline for the LGR approaches, councils across England and Wales are looking closely at the experiences of those who have gone before. As one of the very first to consolidate multiple authorities into one unitary in 2009, Shropshire Council has a wealth of experience to share. From the data migration models and clarity of decision making to strong project management and close supplier collaboration, the team responsible for the systems that support the Council’s Built Environment explain how to ensure everything is ready to go on vesting day and highlight the importance of continuous improvement.

Unitary pioneers:
On April 1, 2009, Shropshire Council became a single unitary authority, replacing the previous two-tier system of Shropshire County Council and five district councils (Bridgnorth, North Shropshire, Oswestry, Shrewsbury and Atcham, and South Shropshire). With a population just over 330,000, 98% of Shropshire Council’s area is defined as rural.

Within Planning, Building Control and Land Charges, the six joining councils were running multiple systems, therefore a priority was to decide on a single system for the unitary. After assessing the different systems and vendors, the decision was taken to adopt Idox’s Uniform Cloud for the new authority. A year before vesting day, Susie Jones, Senior Systems & Development Officer, took the lead, leveraging her previous Uniform experience at Oswestry Borough Council and joining the new project team that was set up to deliver a fully live Uniform Cloud system on 1st April 2009. “Uniform Cloud offered the full suite of functionality required,” says Susie Jones.

Decision making clarity and strong communication were key to the successful migration of all authorities to Uniform Cloud. In addition to extremely strong project leadership, the team included dedicated experts across multiple disciplines, including GIS, IT, ICT security, planning, building control and planning. The Council’s nominated power user in each service area, including land charges, street naming and numbering, was tasked with consulting with the team and providing fast feedback. This level of expertise ensured clarity in requirements definition which accelerated decision making.

Given the short timelines associated with creating a unitary authority, says Susie Jones, “There is no time to wait for decisions. Including the right people from the beginning of the project and having regular meetings to discuss progress and ensure everyone is up to speed is essential.”

Data migration:
Shropshire Council also recognised the vital importance of creating the right data foundation. A fundamental part of this process has been a robust approach to document retention, with the Authority taking early decision to avoid the ‘retain everything’ model that can create enormous, expensive data storage requirements. As Claire Richardson, Business Development Manager, says, “The council is not a reference library – there is no need to keep every comment made on a planning application years ago, for example.”

The strategy prioritised, and continues to prioritise, regulatory requirements for information retention whilst also ensuring the availability of information required by the diverse stakeholders: from staff to counsellors and citizens. For example, agent details were only included if joining Councils had liaised with them or received an application during the previous 12 months.

Throughout the process, Shropshire Council followed Idox’s best practice advice to streamline the deployment set up and accelerate the process, from simplifying code lists, usernames and templates, to getting users into the system while waiting for planning to define application types. In addition, each service area had to come up with a standard set of information in line with the data retention strategy to minimise the amount of data migrated across to the unitary.

The Council also recognised the value of separating internal and external consultees, opting for a simple data coding structure to distinguish between the two groups. This policy has become ever more valuable over time, in streamlining the reporting process. Leveraging the Unique Property Reference Number (UPRN) has also proved extremely valuable in providing a consistent data resource across the Built Environment service areas.

With data now routinely shared across the Authority, for example, to support land use monitoring, the value of the Council’s early and continued commitment to data quality is clear. Claire Richardson says, “Data migration is not just a lift and shift. It is far more complex and demands a clear strategy. But it is also an opportunity to minimise the data, clean it up and consider how to simplify and speed up every single process.”

Platform for continuous improvement:
Shropshire Council has been extremely proactive about continuous improvement. In addition to Uniform Cloud, the Council is using TLC, Public Access, UniMap Web, Enterprise, mobile apps and connectors. The workflow, automation and performance management enabled by Idox’s Enterprise played a key role in supporting the Council’s 2012 strategy to eradicate paper and adopt a completely electronic way of working.

“With all these new Councils amalgamated together and people working in different areas, electronic working was just more efficient and easier. The Enterprise task lists have been very good, ensuring tasks flow through different teams as processes and work elements within teams have changed,” Claire Richardson confirms.

In addition, the Authority was an early adopter of laptops and remote working, a strategy that enabled a rapid response to the COVID pandemic in 2020. The Council has also made significant use of the Power BI tool, using it against the Uniform database to transform reporting. Power BI has also helped to further improve data quality, supporting the Council in its HMLR preparation process.

The team also contributes a Power BI report to Shropshire Council’s Members Gateway which provides councillors with secure access to information relating to their ward. Information includes new planning application decisions, appeals and enforcements, as well as a link directly through to public access. With 50 new councillors winning seats at the last election, the team has also added a series of videos to the Members Gateway, which show councillors how to gain self-service access to information, including saved searched for new and decided applications. Following the success of this approach, the team are creating citizen focused videos, to further increase self-service.

Conclusion:
This proactive approach to technology and innovation throughout the Built Environment is underpinned by strong relationships with business leaders. Regular meetings ensure strong, two- way dialogue regarding any issues with current systems, requests for improvement and planned enhancements.

This model builds strongly on the experience gained during reorganisation, not least the importance of strong project management and excellent communication. For councils now embarking upon their LGR journeys, the priority should be structure and clarity. What do you need to achieve on vesting day? What data is required to support the new authority? How can processes be streamlined?

As Susie Jones says. “Put little blocks in place. The right people, the right data. And get on with it as soon as possible, because consolidation onto a single system will take longer than you think.” Claire Richardson adds, “Be prepared to make decisions and communicate effectively.”

Claire Richardson concludes, “We’re 17 years into our journey since local government reorganisation in 2009. Ensuring everything works on day one is important but it is just the start. This is a continual journey to improve the experience for staff, councillors and citizens.”