Geographical Information Systems (GIS) in local government: analysing the spatial implications of the council tax

This paper describes the development of a street-based GIS for the City of Cardiff which has been used to investigate spatial implications of changes in local government taxation regimes from the domestic rates, through the community charge to the council tax. The construction of a such a street-level database has required management and extensive manipulation of the City's existing person- and property-based registers, neither of which are explicitly geo-referenced. In doing so, issues of confidentiality and temporal and spatial mismatches in the available data are addressed. One of the advantages of such a corporate approach to information management, it is asserted, is the potential for GIS to advance the kinds of analyses currently performed by local authorities.