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The first Gandlake annual UK local government Electronic Bill Presentment (EBP) survey has revealed approximately 10 million citizens in England can now access their own online account to view and check their personal data relating to at least one service available through their local authorities.

Accessing online accounts, citizens can, for example, view past Council Tax statements; check a Council Tax outstanding account balance, payment plan or even a history of payments.

Serving 10,105,524 citizens (20.6 per cent of England’s population), 71 English local authorities (18.3 per cent of the 388 English local authorities) offer an online account. In Scotland 6.3 per cent offer an online account and in Wales the figure is currently 0 per cent.

10 million people now able to access their personal data relating to local authority services, including those from Revenues and Benefits, through online accounts, is significant. It clearly demonstrates that authorities are now wise to the benefits of encouraging citizen self-service, firstly for the citizen, but also for contact centre staff and staff working hard in Revenues and Benefits departments across the UK.

Regional Trends
London leads England for both the number of local authorities in a region offering an online account (approximately 30.3 per cent offer an online account) and the number of citizens in a region that have access to an online account - approximately 1,892,668 citizens (26.7 per cent of London’s population).

Despite local authorities in Yorkshire & Humber offering the second least number of online accounts (just 13.6 per cent offer an online account) the region has the second highest number of citizens able to access an online account – approximately 1,347,558 citizens (26.4 per cent of the regions population).

The North-West region is last - both in terms of local authorities offering an online account (approximately 10.9 per cent) and the number of citizens able to access an online account - just 876,315 citizens (13.1 per cent of the regions population).

English Unitary authorities are most likely to offer an online account (27.3 per cent already do so). Borough (24.6 per cent), District (15.3 per cent) and City (14.7 per cent) are second, third and fourth place respectively. County councils are least likely to offer an online account (just 2.5 per cent).

The Gandlake annual local government Electronic Bill Presentment (EBP) survey was carried out between August and September 2007.

The survey reviewed the websites of 388 English local authority websites, 32 Scottish local authority websites and 32 Welsh local authority websites.