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Since 1999 Improvement and Development Agency (IDeA) has worked in partnership with Intelligent Addressing Ltd and Local Government address managers to produce a definitive index of all buildings, including those in multiple occupation, with a nationally Unique Property Reference Number (UPRN). Local government has invested in this creation, which is driven by their own internal business need for current and accurate address information, so that by the end of October 2006, virtually all of the 375 councils with a statutory responsibility for Street Naming and Numbering are now submitting updates to the NLPG central hub. With over 29 million unique addresses the NLPG is now set to take its place as the de jure addressing standard for England and Wales and through linkage with DNA-S, the Scottish addressing initiative, the whole of Britain.
As part of Mapping Services Agreement (MSA) negotiated by IDeA in 2004, all Local Authority signatories contracted together to create and maintain a Local Land and Property Gazetteers (LLPGs) to a national data standard and consistency. The collation of these LLPGs into the NLPG and the onward maintenance processes put in place to keep the gazetteers up to date will provide rigour in the provision of address data internally within councils, between councils and their partners and with other 3rd party address data users, including Royal Mail.
A recent report by CEBR has highlighted that nearly £55 million per annum can be saved from using gazetteers in those councils responsible for creating and maintain them. It is suspected that many hundreds of millions of pounds more could be saved with the introduction of the NLPG across the public sector as part of the need to transform the way government interacts with people and businesses.
A good example of where the NLPG is being used to improve business processes is where NLPG data has beenmatched against property records from the Valuation Office Agency (VOA) in order to maintain accurate and up to date Council Tax information. With 23.4 million addresses held by the VOA, Intelligent Addressing has announced that 96.21% of the VOA's Council Tax list is matched to the NLPG with 269 Local Authorities in England and Wales achieving a match rate of more than 95% between their own and VOA Council Tax records and 106 over 99%. A similar comparison exercise is being carried out with Non Domestic Rates (NDR)/business rates and will be undertaken early in 2007.
On the back of these recent achievements, IDeA and the local gazetteer custodians have announced a number of new objectives, together with timelines, for the further improvement of the NLPG. These include the adoption of new guidelines for street naming and numbering and the support for the latest version of the national addressing standard BS7666:2006. These improvements will make the NLPG richer, more accurate and easier to use and will ensure that that it will be the most accurate and up-to-date national address dataset available when it becomes available on a wider commercial basis.
"The accuracy and currency of the NLPG is being proved in an ever increasing range of applications that are now using it and the mixture of bottom up and top down processes to achieve this have proved their worth. These are major achievements of which all parties involved should be very proud," said Michael Nicholson, Managing Director of Intelligent Addressing. "The hard work and dedication of the Local Authority address custodians has contributed both to these and future successes. We now have an exciting period ahead as the NLPG is used not only at a local level but also for regional and national benefit."
1st December 2006
Notes to Editors:
Intelligent Addressing is a specialist private sector consultancy (an SME) employing recognised experts in addressing. It was originally set up to help develop the National Land and Property Gazetteer (NLPG) on behalf of local government and now manages the NLPG and NSG central data hubs under the terms of the Mapping Services Agreement (MSA) with local government.
Intelligent Addressing contact:
Gayle Gander, Head of Marketing | 0207 747 3500 | E-mail: [email protected] | www.intelligent-addressing.co.uk, www.thensg.org.uk, www.nlpg.org.uk
Editorial enquiries and colour separation requests:
William Allbrook | T: 01666 826641 | F: 01666 824668
The Improvement and Development Agency (IDeA) The IDeA works in partnership with all councils, to enhance the performance of the best, accelerate the speed of improvement of the rest, and develop the sector as a whole. IDeA has brokered the Mapping Services Agreement (MSA) with Intelligent Addressing to develop the NLPG and NSG, through the Local Government Information House (LGIH), a wholly owned subsidiary of the Agency.
Working in partnership with the local government community developing national infrastructure projects that enable councils to deliver local services more effectively, LGIH acts as an intermediary between the public and the private sector enabling it to negotiate with private companies on behalf of local authorities in order to provide key parts of a technical infrastructure for improved service delivery.
The NLPG is a joint venture between the Information House and Intelligent Addressing Limited.
IDeA contacts:
Steve Brandwood, Programme Manager | 020 7296 6615 | Email: [email protected] | www.idea.gov.uk
Media: Paul Bailey | 020 7296 6529
