Full details in the document Summary of Operational Programs Maintained by SPG (as at 1st Sept 1978) View Scan here [⇗]
London On-line Local Authorities
London On-line Local Authorities
The first application was Rates, a system to collect the local tax based on property values. It went live in April 1972, less than 2 years after LOLA had recruited its first staff.
Over the next two decades 13 suites (systems) were developed with over 317 programs of varying complexity, the majority having on-line real-time access and updating. Many were developed or continuously modified in response to changing central government legislation.
Additionally, a range of packages were used were available and suitable, such as Highways maintenance, Pension payments administration, end user ad-hoc data analysis.
Two-thirds were developed in PL/1, but these probably represented 90% or more of the code written. Some legacy LEO programs (mostly Payroll) were run on the IBM 360 or 370 using an emulator, with other programs written in Fortran, Cobol and Assembler.
The first 2 menu items belows provides more statistics.
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Full details in the document Summary of Operational Programs Maintained by SPG (as at 1st Sept 1978) View Scan here [⇗]
Source: Applications Reference Card (G)View Scan here [⇗]
The system collected the local government property tax known as Rates. Each property had a notional rentable value (set every 10 years or so) and each year the borough council would set a rate in the £ to raise the total funds need to deliver services.
The Rates system contains the details of each hereditament and is a reliable base for the wider concept of property records. It also contains the ratepayers’ personal accounts, automatically calculating the charge, whether it is domestic, mixed or full rate, and deals with rebates and void property.
Rate demands, instalment slips, schedules, final notices, summonses, court lists and warrants are all produced by the computer.
Amendments to the file are effected immediately via VDUs which can display any of the records for inspection.
The Rates application development team was led by Jim Cleall-Harding with Dave Hearn as his senior analyst managing the analysts and Ray Smith managing the programmers. Applications were written in IBM’s high-level Programming Language 1 (PL/1).
The team was supported by the Applications Support Group (ASG) headed by Ken Lewis, responsible for the IMS/DB database design and structural integrity and maintenance, and by the Technical Support Group (TSG) headed by Dave Goodall, responsible for the Operating System and the IMS/DC Communications software.
Besides the 2 application databases: Rates and Schedules (Landlords), 2 core index databases were created: Persons and Properties. These index databases would provide a foundation for further applications.
Development started in 1970, working theoretically with draft IMS manauals as the software was not then available at the IBM datacentre, and it would be about a year before LOLA had it's own computer. Developing this first application had numerous technical challenges:
More details are provided in the Rates System 1972, Notes by Alan Cooper.
Nevertheless, despite all the challenges, the system went live, as planned, for Haringey in April that year, the start of the government’s fiscal year. Hackney and Tower Hamlets followed in October of that year and Hillingdon the following March.
Clerks moved from batch processing, taking days or sometimes a week, to a system that was near paperless and instantly accessible using screens.
Further the same information was available to the Housing department and the new system also kept track of work in-hand. At a management level, information was now available on work loads and the work of the clerical staff was more evenly spread throughout the week.
Further details: Rates System 1972, Notes by Alan Cooper, 2021-06-02 (3pp).
View here [⇗]
Alan was a founder employee working as a Database Adminstrator in the Applications Support Team from 1970 to 1975.
London Boroughs On-line rating system by S Woods, Vol 77 No 7, 1973-July View Repro here [⇗]
Experiences in Using IMS 2, A.J.O'Brien, PATRAC Conference, 1973-03-22. View Repro here [⇗]
IMS-2 at LOLA, by K.W.S. LEWIS, NCC Conference, Bristol, November 1973 View Repro here [⇗]
Ref: LOLA Computer Services Booklet, c1986, page 11. View Repro here [⇗]
PIPS was a generalised highly flexible Property based on-line system which enabled the implementation of many property based functions, normally without the need for development of additional software.
PIPS functions implemented included Housing Voids, Planning, Environmental Health and Improvement Grants. Data extracts could be generated using FOCUS.
Naturally it linked to the central Property and Names databases established by the Rates application.
PIPS Functions [some]
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For full list of 32 functions see ref. 11 below.
Some of these functions are in use in one borough only, others are used by two, three or all four boroughs.
Ref: PIPS - Property Information & Progressing System 1972, Notes by Philip Brown 2021-05-10 (1pp). View here [⇗] Phil was the Project Manager for development of the LOLA PIPS application from circa 1980.
Ref: LOLA Computer Services Booklet, c1986, page 5. View Repro here [⇗]
Generalised Persons Application deals with records about people known to the authority.
Each separate application within GPA is known as a function. Functions contain records which may either be grouped together or held individually.
Records may be retrieved, inspected and amended on-line through VDUs [Visual Display Units]. An analysis suite allows selection of records to be sorted and reformatted. This runs both by reference to pre-defined requests and as an ad hoc system. A facility is available to generate reminders automatically when pre-defined dates are passeNaturally it linked to the central Names database established by the Rates application.
GPA Functions
Ref: LOLA Computer Services Booklet, c1986, page 4. View Repro here [⇗]
In circa 1971 LBMSU undertook a feasibility study to computerise children’s vaccination records. The analysis was undertaken by Mr. Mills (maybe Alan Mills) and the system was to be developed on LBMSU’s LEO III computer.
The system also recorded observations, disabilities, hearing and vision test results, and dental inspection notifications. Participants included hospitals, midwives, GPs, health visitors, dental clinic and Registrar of Births, Marriages and Deaths. At this time many of these functions were undertaken by local authorities.
LOLA inherited the LEO III computer and Martin Jackson maintained the application. It was written in CLEO and never converted to run on the the real-time IMS system. Martin doesn't remember it being required for the LOLA boroughs after 1972.
This information was obtained from an article 20 within Hillingdon Borough Council’s annual Health Report for 1972. It contains 2 diagrams showing the information flows.
Ref: As recalled by Martin Jackson in an email dated 6 March 2023.
CLEO (Clear Language for Expressing Orders) was a second generation Autocode for LEO. It combined features of COBOL and Algol.
The Introduction of Computer Processing of Vaccination Records, E W Jones, LB Hillingdon, 1972, part of Hillingdon's Annual Health Report for 1972. A scanned copy was obtained from the Wellcome Library website (Creative Commons 4.0) and a reproduction can be seen here: View Repro here [⇗] ↩
Another early application was Financial Management, supporting the concept of 'cost centres' 25 and job costing. 26 It went live in late 1973. The application added further 5 physical data bases per borough bring the total number of physical databases to 9 per borough and 36 overall (+another 9 for testing). The number of terminal was planned to grow to 100 by 1976.
Cost Centres
FMA is designed to provide each departmental manager with his or her own set of accounts, known as cost centres, to which are charged all costs for which he or she is responsible.
Facilities exist to compare actual and estimated expenditure on a cost centre and provide exception reports to a responsible officer. Attached to each cost centre is a facility to record estimated and actual activities which can be compared and performance tested. In some cases activities can be directly associated with costs for budgetary testing purposes.
A reanalysis program will restructure the costs into a number of forms notified to the computer, eg for the final accounts or to complete returns. A comprehensive history of charges to subcodes is also provided.
Job costing
For costing individual units of work; where very detailed costs need to be recorded; or where on-costs are to be applied; expenditure is charged to jobs and automatically redirected to FMA.
Information on expenditure at job or cost centre level is available onIine via VDUs: on-line facilities also exist to originate, amend and delete cost-centre and job records.
Charges are passed to FMA to update cost centres and jobs in batch from a number of other applications eg Payroll, Creditors.
For more detailed analysis the cost centre and jobs detail history files record all charges in a financial year. Selective prints of history files are available; a full print-out is produced on microfiche at intervals when specified by the users. Facilities are being developed to interrogate these files on-line.
London boroughs 'on-line', Derek Schartau, Head of Computer Services, LOLA (London On-line Local Authorities), Municipal and Public Services Journal, 29 December 1972 View Repro here [⇗] ↩
Ref: LOLA Computer Services Booklet, c1986, page 7. View Repro here [⇗]
Principally detailed progressing of maintenance work on council property e.g. houses, schools.
The Creditors application records and processes payments by the authority. It aggregates them on to cheques with payment advice, automaticallyproduces regular payments (eg for foster parents) on the due date, and reconciles cheques issued with those presented at the bank.
It also automatically generates commitment and payment charges for inclusion in FMA. On-line facilities are available to originate, amend or interrogate the records, including the ability to notify and verify payments on-line.
Ref: LOLA Computer Services Booklet, c1986, page 8. View Repro here [⇗]
After Rates went live, one of the next applications to be rewritten was Payroll in Project Team 2. Originally Payroll ran on the old LEO and LOLA asked IBM to write a LEO Intercode emulator to run on the IBM/360. Gradually the Payroll suite was rewriten in PL/1 over several phases 111. A September 1978 document 112 shows some emulated LEO code was still being used.
Payroll calculates employee’s pay and related statutory and voluntary deductions (eg trade union subscriptions), produces payrolls and payslips providing a comprehensive breakdown of pay elements to show an employee how his/her pay is made up.
As a by-product of the payroll a cash analysis is produced showing the cashier how many notes/coins of each denomination are required. For non-cash paid employees cheques or bank credit transfers via BACS are produced.
Full details of the charges arising from the calculation of pay are automatically passed to FMA.
Payroll is a major source of computerised staffing information, the history file provides a period by period picture of all hours worked and the pay elements calculated together with details of when key fields have changed.
On-line transactions are now available in certain areas which enable selected records to be displayed on the screen. The on-Iine facilities are gradually being extended with a number of major enhancements In the pipeline to allow, for example, an employee's record to be viewed on the screen subject to the necessary security rules being satisfied
Also see Pensions Administration below.
Ref: LOLA Computer Services Booklet, c1986, page 6. View Repro here [⇗]
Ref: As recalled by Martin Jackson, email, 1st March 2023.
Ref: Summary of Operational Programs Maintained by SPG, SPG, LOLA, 1978-09-01 . View Scan here [⇗]
Maintains the miscellaneous debtors’ accounts and automatically provides for the credits to be posted to income heads in the accounting program. Accounts for recurring debtors are' produced in time for dispatch on the due date. Facilities are provided for reminders of non-payment and to produce lists for recovery procedures.
The Financial Management Application and Job Costing receives income charges from the programs already mentioned
Ref: LOLA Computer Services Booklet, c1986, page 8. View Repro here [⇗]
The system is designed to allow payment to a borough via the BACS Direct Debiting System. At present the system is used only by Rates. The direct debit database can be updated in batch or by VDU [Visual Display Unit].
Ref: LOLA Computer Services Booklet, c1986, page 8. View Repro here [⇗]
See DYNAPLAN under PACKAGES AVAILABLE (at the bottom of this page)
In c1986 a stand-alone mini-computer based system was planned to interface with the LOLA mainframe systems
Ref: LOLA Computer Services Booklet, c1986, page 11. View Repro here [⇗]
A Housing Lettings system for Tower Hamlets has been designed. This system enables available properties to be allocated to the applicants on the Waiting and Transfer lists based on their requirements and priority status.
Ref: LOLA Computer Services Booklet, c1986, page 9. View Repro here [⇗]
Structural details of properties, whether they are let or empty; records of tenants, present and former; and rent accounts are maintained on this system. Structural details and Tenant Records are updated on-line.
The financial details are updated weekly; there is an on-line data capture facility which allows updating, interrogation and deletion of any pending amendment data. Tenant Notifications and Statements are automatically produced to keep tenants informed of any change in their rent details and current balance.
All rent accounts can be fully interrogated on-line where detailed amendment and payment histories exist. Payments are credited to the account nightly.
Personal and property amendments can be set up on-line immediately.
An extract of the full database is defined to FOCUS, a report generator, to enable the users to generate analysis and reports on a regular or ad hoc basis.
Ref: LOLA Computer Services Booklet, c1986, page 9. View Repro here [⇗]
Due to the very limited timescale available to develop a system to meet the statutory deadline of 1 April 1982, the decision was made to base the system data structure on defined PIPS functions, rather than develop new IMS databases from scratch. This enabled a more rapid development of the system.
The most innovative facilities enabled on-line retrospective calculations of Rent / Rate rebates back to any date in the past, over unlimited multiple Rebate history periods.
Ref: Housing Rent & Rebates 1982, Notes by Philip Brown 2021-05-10 (2pp). View here [⇗] Phil was the Project Manager for development of the Housing Rent & Rebates application.
A system for processing stores transactions, including an interface with the mainframe applications FMA and Creditors, audit facilities and later extension into purchase control is being implemented. 130
On-line facilities included enquiries and maintenance of commodities and suppliers, movements of stock and on-line Bin card. Batch facilities included price control and stock revaluation.132
Initially the Stores application team tried some new technology in the form of MARK IV/V but reverted to the trusted PL/1 & IMS. 131
Ref: Housing Rent & Rebates 1982, Notes by Philip Brown 2021-05-10 (2pp). View here [⇗] Phil was the Project Manager for development of the Housing Rent & Rebates application.
As recalled in January 2021 by Jeremy Leighton (at LOLA from 1980-93).
Ref: Applications Reference Card (G), 1988/89. View Scan here [⇗]
Housing Benefits is designed to be an on-line and batch system based on IMS databases, to enable on-line real-time calculations of Housing Benefits (rent and rate rebates).
The most innovative facility, enables on-line retrospective calculations of Housing Benefits back to any date in the past, over unlimited multiple Housing Benefit history periods.
There are two complementary systems for the public sector (council tenants) and the private sector (private tenants). Case records are maintained for all tenants eligible for housing benefit. On-line transactions are used for benefit calculations during the day with results being displayed immediately on the screen.
Bulk re—calculation of all tenant housing benefit occurs whenever there are rent or rate increases, or a government increase to pensions and welfare benefits.
The public sector system feeds all new housing benefit values into the Housing system to ensure that the tenant's rent is reduced accordingly.
The private sector system pays housing benefit to tenants by production of Giro and bank cheques via the Creditors system.
Rate rebates for Owner-occupiers was also included.
Ref: Housing Benefits 1988, Notes by Philip Brown, 2021-05-10 (3pp). View here [⇗] Phil was the Project Manager for development of the Housing Benefits application.
Ref: LOLA Computer Services Booklet, c1986, page 10. View Repro here [⇗]
Housing Advances maintains a personal account for each mortgagor granted a mortgage by the authority. Instalment slips and reminder notices may be produced as appropriate, and statements of account and of interest due are also produced for the mortgagor. Changes in the rate of interest are calculated.
The application has been enhanced by use of FOCUS to provide on-line interrogation and redemption facilities.
Ref: LOLA Computer Services Booklet, c1986, page 10. View Repro here [⇗]
The LOLA system maintains a record of current library loans for selected libraries in Haringey.
The data is collected in the libraries via light pens connected to a Plessey mini-computer system. The basis of the system is that a borrower is issued with a single ticket with a bar coded label. The ticket may be used to borrow books anywhere in the borough.
Books are similarly bar coded. The light pen is 'wiped' across these bar codes and data on loan functions such as issues and discharges is recorded on the Plessey minicomputer. Magnetic tapes containing this loan information are sent daily to LOLA for processing of recovery action for overdue books, borrower and reader interrogation, management reports and statistics.
Ref: LOLA Computer Services Booklet, c1986, page 12. View Repro here [⇗]
DLO is a system for charging clients (services) for work performed by DLOs in order to make statutory profit, utilising local terminals. Results are used to update FMA (cost centre level) with transactions relating to both client expenditure and DLO income heads.
Laser DLO software is being implemented in Tower Hamlets and Haringey.
Ref: LOLA Computer Services Booklet, c1986, page 12. View Repro here [⇗]
For pensions administatrion, Haringey and Tower Hamlets used the CLASS package. It provided automatic calculation of pension increases, annual increments, salary and wage awards together with any arrears of pay and tabulations to assist in the preparation of annual estimates. There were data links to CLASS from the Payroll System.
There is mention of another pensions administration package called UPS, presumably used by either or both of Hillingdon or Hackney.
Ref: Applications Reference Card (G), 1988/89. View Scan here [⇗]
See PACKAGES below.
For the Haringey Borough, LOLA developed a Planning Search system. When someone purchases a property their solicitor will ask the council to list any planning application that might impact the property, such as road changes or property developments nearby. This system reduced the time for the council to respond from upto 16 weeks to 5 to 7 days.
Called "Exchange", it was written in PRO-IV. Haringey/LOLA hoped to sell the system to other councils.
Ref: Haringey Planning Search newspaper article, LOLA, Newsletter Nov 89, LOLA, 1989-11 View Scan here [⇗] View Repro here [⇗]
The Highway Departments use a number of systems:
This is a package system used by Hackney for maintaining road inspection data and for calculating costs such as treatement. Analysis can produce costed prioritised list of treatements for road defects. On-line staff can interrogate and update the master database. For more information see under Packages at the end of this page.
This is another package system used by Haringey and Hillingdon offering similar functionality as MARCH. For more information see under Packages at the end of this page.
Ref: Applications Reference Card (G), 1988/89. View Scan here [⇗]
In 1990 Rates was replaced by Community Charge130 (dubbed the Poll Tax). Whereas Rates was based on a notional rental value of a property, Community Charge was a tax charge on each adult living in a property.
The Community Charge development commenced in 1987 with Martin Jackson as the project manager with Steve Barfield and Nigel Stratton-Fidel the main programmers.
The Community Charge Benefits development commenced in 1989 with. Phil Brown as the project manager. 140.
The system was designed to be an on-line and batch system based on IMS databases, to enable on-line real-time calculations of Community Charge Benefits for Public tenants, Private tenants and owner occupiers. The system was integrated with the LOLA developed Community Charge system and Housing Benefits systems.
In 2002 Tower Hamlets retained ITNET to manage the LOLA systems for the borough (the other boroughs having left LOLA). Also transferring to ITNET were Martin Jackson (programmer), Matthew James (Systems Analyst), Brian Woodyatt (Systems Analyst) and David Turvey (programmer). For the full team see the Staff page.
Ref: LOLA Community Charge Benefits System 1990, Notes by Murali Vidyadharan, 2021-05-22 (2pp). View here [⇗] Murali Vidyadharan was the Lead Systems Analyst for the Community Charge Benefits system and became the manager from 1999. ↩
The Non Domestic Rates (i.e. Business Rates) development commenced in 1989.
In c1991 Internal Billing started as a development in FOCUS, which had only been used for reporting up till then. It then got rewritten in the latest language PRO-IV and [possibly] was the first port of a mainframe application to Unix for Hillingdon.
As recalled in January 2021 by Jeremy Leighton (at LOLA from 1980-93).
In 1991 LOLA acquired PRO-IV as a strategic 4GL and LOLA took over support of the PRO-IV Social Services Client Index for Haringey. Several smaller applications were written with PRO-IV as the front end.
As recalled in March 2021 by Jeremy Leighton (at LOLA from 1980-93).
In 1993 Community Charge was replaced by Council Tax. Like the earlier Rates system, Council Tax was based on property, not residents. Houses were valued and allocated into bands from A to H with each band being levied a tax charge.
At this time the 4 boroughs went to the market to select a software supplier. Tower Hamlets selected IBS Council Tax only, the others went for Sx3 (now Northgate) Council Tax and Benefits systems 190.
As recalled in March 2021 by Murali Vidhyadharan (at LOLA from 1989-2006 and previously at Tower Hamlets from 1985). ↩
The original Council Tax Benefits system development was commissioned by Tower Hamlets only. The development commenced in 1992 and went live in April 1993.
Council Tax Benefits system was designed to be an on-line and batch system based on IMS databases, to enable on-line real-time calculations of Council Tax Benefits for Public tenants, Private tenants and owner occupiers. The system was integrated with the LOLA developed Housing Benefits systems. It was also integrated with the IBS Council Tax system chosen by Tower Hamlets by LOLA developing a 2-way interface.
This team also supported Housing Benefits and in in 2002 (under ITNET) developed a web based Free School Meals that interfaced to the Benefits system.
Hackney were unhappy with Sx3 Benefits system after implementation and requested LOLA to migrate them to the LOLA Council Tax Benefits system and build a 2-way interface to Sx3 Council Tax system. This was successfully achieved in 1995. Steve Barield, Nigel and later on Martin Jackson all worked on this development. For the full team see the Staff page.
However, a few years later in 2002 ITNET won the Hackney IT contract and they migrated away from LOLA systems in 2004.
Ref: LOLA Council Tax Benefits System 1993, Notes by Murali Vidhyadharan, 2021-05-22 (2pp). View here [⇗] Murali Vidyadharan was the Project Leader and Deputy Project Manager and subsequently took over as Project Manager in 1999. ↩
LOLA implemented a Memo System from Verimation whereby people in the boroughs and at LOLA who had access to a VDU could send messages to each other. This was well before the world wide web and email systems!
All above as recalled in February 2021 by Martin Jackson (at LOLA from 1970-2006 and previously at LBMSU from 1968).
Computerised Local Authority Superannuation System from Heywood. This pensions administation system maintains superannuation [pension] records and calculates benefits.
LOLA hosted this package for Tower Hamlets & Haringey. It ran on IBM's CICS platform and was installed around 1992 and was likely the only CICS system that LOLA supported.
As recalled in May 2024 by Mark Winter (at LOLA from 1987-1995). Heywood are at heywood.co.uk
Virginia Department of Transport, flickr CC2.0
A highway maintenance package. The Transport Reseach Board [⇗] gives some background to a 1982 report. In summary:
West Midlands County Council and Nottinghamshire County Council have both used the March system extensively since introducing it in 1974/5.
The system includes methods of creating an inventory of highway assets, assessment of these assets, priority list of treatments, staffing to carry out the survey of the assets.
It is unclear whether the software package was provided by these council or by a third party.
A highway maintenance package. Semantic Scholar [⇗] gives some background to a 1975 report. In summary:
The 1970 Committee on Highway Maintenance Report (aka The Marshall Report) included recommendations on standards of maintenance for use by highway authorities and the outline of a system for inspecting roads to ascertain their conditions.
After discussions with highway authorities a second report describes in detail methods of inspecting roads to provide data for evaluating their structural maintenance needs. It also outlined the chart program suite for computer processing the data.
It is possible that the Chart package was developed by the UK Transport and Road Research Laboratory (TRRL)
Central Land Use SysTem and Employment Register maintains a file of the details of property erected on land and the use to which that land is dedicated within the borough. It also contains information on employment in commercial premises.
A UK Goverment report of 2006 refers to CLUSTER as a system adopted by a number of London Boroughs and forming a key element of the 1971 London-wide land use survey.
National Land Use Database: Land Use and Land Cover Classification, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, February 2006.
Careers Advisory Service Computer AID is a package used to aid career officers in selecting career suggestions to suit the work interests and qualifications of each young person they advice.
CASCAID was developed between 1969 and 1972 for Leicestershire County Council Careers Service. By 1979 there were 33 local authorities using CASCAID. The company is still operating today at view here [⇗].
STudent Records In Further Education.
Maintenance and production of register and poll cards etc for elections.
A report generator and inquiry language, which enables users in the boroughs to provide regular or ad hoc analyses/reports from data held on LOLA’s various mainframe systems.
All queries are developed and tested on-line using a subset of the relevant data. Operational runs against the production databases or files are also submitted on-line and then run in batch mode overnight.
An application generator, which enhances the productivity of the Applications programmers by generating a great number of machine instructions from a single programming statement.
Designing screen layouts and batch output is also simplified; screens can be simulated, thus enabling analysts and users to come to an agreement at a very early stage in the design of an application.
In 1991 LOLA acquired PRO-IV as a strategic 4GL. It was used for the Haringey's Social Services Client Index and for their Planning Search system [see above respective applications]. View Pro-IV website: here [⇗].
ADRS stands for A Departmental Reporting System and is a generalised IBM supplied APL package providing an easy-to-use environment for entering, storing and processing information and for producing printed reports. Communication with ADRS is via an APL terminal.
ADI stands for APL Data Interface. It is a collection of programs which enable a user with an APL terminal to interrogate extracts of any of LOLA‘s databases and files, and to obtain (more or less) immediate response to his enquiries.
Ref: LOLA Computer Services Booklet, c1986, pages 13 & 14. View Repro here [⇗]