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As a Lotus Business Partner, we were approached by our long standing client, the London Borough
of Brent to create a number of Internet and Intranet applications including the pilot design
for their award winning One Stop Shop.
Applications built for Brent have included:
 Estate Management
An intranet based system, designed to catalogue the council's numerous office properties throughout the borough. This system includes photographs of the properties, maps of their locations, detailed floor plans, facilities available, rents and occupancy details.
When parts of the buildings were to become vacant, the system would advertise these details, with e-mailed application forms and information regarding the services offered by the Estates department.
External Housing stocks
In common with many other London boroughs, Brent has been constrained in its abilities to offer decent housing to the local homeless. The borough decided to recruit the assistance of local landlords to help overcome this problem. By offering cash inducements and guarantees, it aimed to use private
enterprise to supplement its own efforts to house those unfortunate enough to find themselves homeless, and thus break the circle of no home, no job and no job meaning no home. This initiative is aimed at helping the community to help itself.
The role of this Internet based system is to collect information about landlords, details of their properties and future availability and to produce a catalogue of available housing stock which could be viewed by homeless families either using PCs in the council's offices, or in local public libraries.
One Shop Stop
Many local residents find negotiating their way through the various council departments can be a minefield, needing separate visits to say the housing department, the benefits agency, the education department etc. Brent decided to try to make life easier for its residents by creating a One Stop Shop where queries of all sorts could be answered from one desk, but how could one person have access to all the information needed?, and how could the different systems for each department by accessed?
Powell & Associates designed a Lotus Notes based system which held the rules and regulations for each department accessible in one place, with contact details (by phone for immediate response, and by e-mail (detailing the necessary information to be collected) if the enquiry would take longer to process.
This system has now been rolled out across 3 remote offices in addition to the Town Hall, and has won awards both for its innovative approach, and the design of the supporting IT systems.
Other applications:
Council Strategy Documentation
Departmental Library support
Telephone directory and departmental registry
Powell & Associates is proud to have been associated with these innovative and effective ideas on which we have worked with the London Borough of Brent.
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