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In just two weeks’ time, Birmingham will be crowded with addressing and streets experts – hundreds of them, all squeezed into Edgbaston cricket ground for GeoPlace’s annual conference.
Over 400 predominately local government people will participate in the only day of the year given over exclusively to talking UPRNs, USRNs, BLPUs, ESUs, LPIs, DTFs, DECs and the like (NOTE – check out the GeoPlace glossary if you need help with the acronyms!)
With representatives from over two thirds of authorities that are responsible for creating and maintaining address and streets information, the conference is testament to the work and dedication that goes into creating AddressBase, the UK’s most definitive address data containing nearly 43 million addresses and the OS MM Highways Network, with over 1.3 million streets.
With so many people attending, the challenge was to ensure that the agenda was challenging informative and interesting. With the overall theme of ‘Linking people to places’ speakers throughout the day will demonstrate how linking data places adds value, gives better insight into an area and its citizens and allocates the provision of more targeted services.
Councils across Great Britain rely on information from hundreds of different sources. Adding the location information to datasets such as social care, school admissions, council tax collection, waste management, electoral registration or planning applications can help make deeper sense of data once it's linked together:
- The Director of the newly established Geospatial Commission will provide an introduction and overview on why Government views all this data as a critical national resource
- Ofcom will be discussing superfast broadband and universal service
- The Department for Transport will talk about improving streetworks coordination and the need for good quality data
- Kent County Council will demonstrate how the UPRN links health and social care
- Wolverhampton Council will talk about the role of addressing in business transformation
- CIPFA will highlight the importance of addressing in identifying fraud and error in business rates
- In a double header the Valuation Office Agency and the Local Government Association will talk about the census and its impact on local government finance
- In a provocatively titled presentation ‘Why I (still) hate addresses’, the Valuation Office Agency discuss what an address actually represents across government and most particularly for the VOA
- The Transport Network ITS Spatial Data Deployment Platform will discuss the delivery of a European wide intelligent transport system
- Another speaker from the Department of Transport will talk about the work of councils in enabling funding allocations for streets
- Speakers from Thames Water, Western Power Distribution and Highways England will discuss how good quality streets data from councils enables them to make informed decisions
- Street Naming and Numbering is an important part of the day – a dedicated session will focus on a five-year action plan for good addressing and provide advice to councils on matters such as legislation and charging.
Interspersed in all these are Roundtable discussion sessions where delegates can come together for more in-depth small sessions on topics such as:
- Closer working with the emergency services
- Using the UPRN as a key to access public sector data
- Healthy incentives for a healthy environment
- Potholes!
- How linking UPRN/USRN can make you money, help emergency services and possibly save a life
- How local authorities can derive more benefit from maintaining their LLPG subset
- What are the barriers to Gazetteer custodians including PRoW on the LSG?
- Do we need the third dimension in address, building and land-use data?
- Communal Establishments and other troublesome addresses.
The conference is supported by a 15-strong exhibition from suppliers to local government, who are there to meet existing customers and impress future ones.
To round it all off, the Leader of Birmingham City Council will present the Exemplar Awards to the winners of our annual Awards for innovation and data quality.
If you’re from the public sector and interested in coming along, see our website - https://www.geoplace.co.uk/news-events/annual-conference.
After all this, we’ll need those drinks on the terrace overlooking the cricket.
Howzat!
