Parish Online User Group

AUTHOR: GRAHAM STODDART-STONES, FOUNDER AND MANAGER OF THE PARISH ONLINE USER GROUP

What is Parish Online? Parish Online is recommended by NALC as a tool to help local councils manage their businesses. Over 1,400 councils already use Parish Online and, if you haven’t already done so, I suggest that you evaluate Parish Online by taking out a free trial. Parish Online is an affordable web-based, map-based information management system which allows councils to access OS mapping, address data and a host of other national datasets. Councils can use these maps as a reference to build their own asset layers (for things like allotments, streetlights and playground equipment). Councils can also use Parish Online to develop their own plans (for instance Neighbourhood Plans, Emergency Plans and Tree Planting Plans).

Multi-tier Networks. As well as helping councils to manage their internal affairs, Parish Online also provides an excellent medium for councils to share data with each other, and with higher tiers of local government. Martin Laker leads the GIS Team at Bath and NE Somerset Council (B&NES). He has been funding a Parish Online Group Licence since 2011 for all his 49 parishes and he publishes all his Unitary Authority datasets to the parishes via Parish Online. Martin says “The Group Licence for Parish Online has been an outstanding success - the parishes love it and they often say that it’s the best thing the council has ever done for them!  In addition, we estimate that we fully recover the entire cost of the Group Licence through the savings we make in responding to requests for information”.

Parish Online User Group Somerset. Better inter-tier working is recognised by NALC as a priority for a more efficient local government, and it is clear to me that every single council, however small, needs to have access to a web-based mapping system as a prerequisite to achieving better joined-up government. I became a parish councillor in Long Sutton, Somerset, in 2019 after 41 years in the IT industry, and when I came across Parish Online I immediately saw its huge potential as a way to improve inter-tier working. What surprised me was how few district and county councils had followed B&NES’ lead in sharing their data with their parishes and encouraging them to use Parish Online. So, in 2020 I founded the Parish Online User Group Somerset (PUGS) with the twin aims of encouraging more parishes to adopt Parish Online, and of lobbying the Somerset Districts and County Council to follow B&NES’ lead in making their data available to parishes in digital form. PUGS has made excellent progress in its first year of operations – we have 147 Members (out of 339 Somerset parishes); South Somerset District has now adopted the district version of Parish Online (called XMAP) and is sharing its data much more freely with its parishes, and we are in close touch with all the other Somerset Districts and the County Council about sharing data to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of parish decision-making.

PUGS is a National User Group. Because PUGS was born at the beginning of the Covid pandemic, its meetings are conducted entirely on Zoom. I hold regular and free sessions both to demonstrate the capabilities of Parish Online and to discuss ideas and initiatives for using Parish Online more effectively (one of the major lessons that I have learned is that the scope of Parish Online is only limited by the imagination of the users, and it’s therefore very helpful to share ideas). Although initially PUGS was intended to support only Somerset councils, I have started to work closely with some other counties – for instance, Suffolk where I am working closely with the Suffolk Association of Local Councils. I now believe that it would be helpful to share experiences and knowledge with councils across the whole country, so please feel free to join in. I would welcome guests who are involved at any level of local government (parishes, districts, unitary authority and county) and in any capacity.

You can register for any of the sessions via the PUGS website.