Linking People to Places: A review of the GeoPlace 2022 conference

Our jam-packed agenda attracted 1,030 registrations, mainly from the public sector but also from property professionals who were keen to hear why market leaders such as Zoopla and Nationwide are using location data.

Every service provider needs to make a connection between people and places. Whether that’s helping people in fuel poverty, understanding energy use, lighting the highways, repairing potholes and having bins collected, supporting vulnerable people (particularly important as the pandemic settles but has not ceased to be a concern), connecting to superfast broadband and 5G, voting, or paying council tax.

Accurate, up-to-date and authoritative address and street data is needed for all of these services. Every address record authority contains a Unique Property Reference Number (UPRN) and every street record contains a Unique Street Reference Number (USRN).

Speakers at the conference demonstrated that they need this kind of location information to understand where people and assets are and link together data at the household or street level. For example:

• target warm home grants
• understand energy use in buildings
• identify households that are fuel poor
• administer payments such as seasonal benefits, Universal Credit and pensions
• identify fraudulent claims
• improve housing quality
• build a vulnerability index
• build a nation underground asset register
• give hard-to-reach areas access to gigabit-capable networks
• develop active travels routes to shift people from car use
• support property conveyancing through a building a Property Risk Hub
• understand the impact of climate change on lender risk management and appetite
• bring together conveyancing with property sales
• support Local Land Charges to improving the home-buying process
• drive improvement in the rented sector
• support the proposal to develop a National Landlord Register
• support building safety and a golden thread of building information
• improve local authority building safety data
• identify tall buildings
• save lives through emergency response
• improve services through back-office integration.

All of the video presentations from the conference are on the GeoPlace website, together with a written summary of each session. Please click on the sessions below for more information.

• Safer, more secure homes and buildings
• Stronger British infrastructure
• Warmer, more sustainable homes and buildings
• Improving the property chain
• Your data, supporting local public services
• Using UPRNs and USRNs to integrate data in your authority
• From planning to maintenance to demolition, the lifecycle of address and street data