## [Developing a tool to signpost residents to the right local services](/insight/developing-tool-signpost-residents-right-local-services) Body ![/sites/default/files/2026-06/location_hero.png](/sites/default/files/2026-06/location_hero.png) [News](/insights?field_tags_target_id=9) 30 June 2026 | Duncan Davidson # Developing a tool to signpost residents to the right local services When local councils merge into a single new authority, the website usually catches up faster than the services underneath it do. Parking rules, recycling centre locations, who your local councillor is, all of it can still depend on which legacy area you happen to live in, until all the old council sites have been fully merged into the new unitary one. Residents land on one website, but the answer they need still depends on where they are located. We've spent the last few years working on this through our local government reorganisation projects in Cumbria, and we've now taken what we learned and turned it into something any council can use. It's called [Location Signpost](https://www.drupal.org/project/location_signpost), and we've released it on drupal.org for any council to use on their own site. ## Where it started The original version of this tool was built specifically for one council's needs: a postcode and address lookup that could tell a resident which area they fell into, and then show them the right links for that area. Parking permit information, the nearest recycling centre, contact details for the right local team, whatever the council needed to vary by district. It worked well, but it was tightly bound to that one site. The area boundaries, the link structure, even some of the wording, were all built specifically for a single client. Useful for them, but no use to anyone else. Given how many councils are facing the same problem right now, that felt like a missed opportunity. So we took the working parts of the original tool and reshaped them into something any council website can install and configure for itself, regardless of who built the site. ## What it actually does The idea is simple, even if the bit underneath isn't. A resident types in their postcode or address. As they type, the module suggests matching addresses by checking against Ordnance Survey's mapping data. Once they pick the right one, the postcode gets looked up to find out which small local area it falls within, based on the geographic boundaries used by the Office for National Statistics. That area is then matched against the boundaries a council has set up for each of its own services, and the right set of links gets shown. So a resident on one side of a merged council sees the contact details and links relevant to them. A resident on the other side, who might be in a completely different legacy district, sees theirs instead. Same page, same search box, different answer, because that's what's actually true on the ground. A couple of decisions we made along the way are worth mentioning, because they're the kind of thing that makes the difference between a tool that's genuinely useful for other councils and one that just looks like it is. The links themselves are everyday content, not something only a developer can change. We built them so editors manage them the same way they manage everything else on the site, no developer needed to add a new area or update a link. We also added the ability to group links by purpose. A council might want one version of this tool on their parking page, showing parking-specific links, and a completely separate version on a recycling page, showing recycling-specific links, for the same set of areas. This lets you do that without having to set up the area data twice. For sites that build their pages out of smaller content blocks rather than fixed page templates, there's an optional add-on that does the same job in that context too, so editors aren't locked into one way of placing it on a page. ## Solving it once, together This isn't the first time we've taken something built for one council and turned it into something the wider LocalGov Drupal community can use. We did the same with our [elections reporting tool](https://www.drupal.org/project/localgov_elections) and [waste collection schedules](https://www.drupal.org/project/localgov_waste_collection), which started as a one-off build for separate authorities and are now key parts of the LocalGov Drupal ecosystem. LocalGov Drupal is an open, shared platform that only gets better when the councils and suppliers using it put things back in, rather than each one quietly solving the same problem on their own. Every council going through reorganisation right now is wrestling with some version of "different rules for different bits of the new authority." Being part of this community means helping make sure that problem doesn't need solving from scratch each time. ## What's next Location Signpost is currently an alpha release. That means the core of it works, but we're still keen for other councils and developers to put it through its paces before we'd call it fully proven. If you'd like to get involved in testing it, please do, and raise any issues you find through Drupal.org. If you have questions or want to talk it through first, you can also find us on the LocalGov Drupal Slack. If your council is going through reorganisation, or already has, and you're dealing with the same patchwork of services depending on where residents live, this might save you a fair bit of time. Get in touch and we can talk through whether it fits what you need. ![](/themes/custom/rohallion/images/home-header-overlay.svg) Let's start a project together... Simply fill in this form with your key details and we'll be in touch. 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