Last week I chaired the Babergh Information Management Task Group which meets every two months or so. At the meeting we were given a demonstration of the fantastic new electronic mapping system ‘LAMP’ that is being installed at Babergh at a cost of over £1 million.
In contrast to the activities of the County Council, much of Babergh's work can be seen as geograpically oriented, and the relatively high sum invested in this project reflects the importance of being able to capture and understand the physical environment in which we live.
LAMP is an interactive system that will help officers in a number of departments to identify and manipulate individual sites across the District and to retrieve a number of important features , such as rights of way or flood plains, for any given area. It does a lot automatically that was previously done manually, so should save time and cost for the Council. In the short term however the economic situation has lead to a downturn in applications for Land Charge searches and Building Control activity has also been lower. This has unfortunately postponed some of the benefits.
At present the system, which is not yet fully operational, will only be available internally, but in the longer term it is likely that Parish Councils will be able to access it on a limited basis. Also in the future it may well be possible to provide people looking to buy properties in the area with a wealth of information about sites in which they are interested.
