Sandwell Council has migrated more than one million
records on individual properties to a new property management
system in time to meet a nationwide end-of-2005 deadline to offer
planning application searches online.
The new system will also leave the council well-placed to handle
the expected arrival of home information packs in 2007.
The metropolitan borough council moved the records from its
local land charge register and the COM 29 form, which also holds
information about properties.
Council officers needed to make their planning records
searchable and also wanted to make their property records
searchable ahead of the launch of home information packs.
From June 2007, anyone selling a residential property will have
to provide a pack with all the publicly available information about
that property. Councils have a statutory duty to record land
charges and other property information, such as environmental
health records.
Sandwell's planning systems and service improvement manager,
Calvin Bradley, said, "We migrated data regarding planning
histories, building regulations, passwords information, whether
there are public rights of way, conservation areas and listed
buildings."
The property records were migrated to CAPS Solutions' Uniform
system. Solicitors and council officers searching for information
about properties use a different application, called CAPS Total
Land Charges to extract information from Uniform.
The implementation of both CAPS systems and the ongoing
maintenance of them are covered by a seven-year managed service
contract.
The contract with systems integrator MacDonald Dettwiler will
cost the council more than £1m over the life of the contract. The
managed service contract started in October 2005 after Sandwell
spent 15 months implementing the applications and migrating the
data.
Council officers were able to do the first searches using the
new systems last November.
Sandwell has 120 licences for the two applications. Bradley
said, "We have just implemented an increase in the number of
licences. That's been a good thing for us because it shows people
have been using the data on a regular basis."
The cost of implementing CAPS was increased by the need to
interface the applications with a system called Flare used by the
council's environmental health department.
The property management systems are connected to the National
Land Information Service hub, which enables solicitors to initiate
searches and receive the results of them electronically.
Planning application searches are also possible for the public
through Sandwell's own website.