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son, Common Councillor for Aldersgate Ward to Sophie Birchall-Rogerson, Senior Management Information Systems Officer at the 14th annual GeoPlace conference and exhibition in central London, on 9th May 2019 - attended by Jesse Noman MP, Minister of State for the Department for Transport, and William Priest, CEO of the Geospatial Commission.
The GeoPlace Exemplar Award 2019 was awarded to Conwy County Borough Council, for its Environment, Roads and Facilities (ERF) Digital Transformation Project. This award highlights an excellent example of local addressing and/or street datasets being used to deliver real-world benefits for communities in a specific area.
Conwy has restructured the department responsible for almost all of the Council's front-line services â everything from highway maintenance to parks, street lighting, recycling, waste, road safety, flood risk management, and bereavement services.
After an in-depth review, the existing Highways Asset Management system was chosen as the basis for the new departmental system. As a result, every customer-generated request for service is driven by a Unique Street Reference Number (USRN). The result is a suite of connected, consistent, trusted Customer Portals that have been whole-heartedly embraced by the public â with significant savings, right across the Council.
Following the review and the transformation activity, 2016 departmental data across a wide range of front-line public services was linked directly to the Local Street Gazetteer and USRN. The Customer Service Advice Team could now click on a map, zoom to a location and see what data was held at a glance. This integrated approach optimised service delivery and made a notable improvement in customer communication.
As an example of the savings made, 47.2% of all Street Lighting requests for service or attention in 2017 were reported on-line via the new portals. The number of days to repair streetlamp failures showed a significant improvement from 4.75 days in 2014-15 to 2.56 days in 2017/18, which demonstrates massive improvements in service delivery. In addition, the reduction in system and administrative costs of multiple systems resulted in an annual saving of £126,260.00.
Nick Chapallaz, Managing Director of GeoPlace said: "Every year, it gives us immense pleasure to highlight the outstanding work that's being done by Street and Address Custodians. The 2019 Exemplar Awards reflect not only the time and effort that goes into delivering great service, using street and addressing information, but also the commitment that's being made to improving the accuracy and quality of the data itself. I would like to congratulation Sophie Birchall-Rogerson, Nicole Colman and Andrew Wilkinson for their work leading this transformative project. Everyone can benefit from the power of location data, and this year's Exemplar Awards show just how Conwy County Borough Council are using it to really bring location to life."
Good quality address and street data underpin many aspects of local government business; from large transformation projects with the local address and street gazetteers at the heart, saving the authorities millions of pounds; to smaller initiatives which have found clever ways to join up other information, or to use the gazetteers in unusual ways.
The Awards highlight Custodians' roles within their authorities and enable their work to be more widely promoted to all parts of the authority. They allow the many services which currently use address and street data to see that the high standard of the data is externally recognised. From radical transformation initiatives saving millions of pounds for local authorities, to smaller projects improving data management by using the local address and street gazetteers in innovative ways â almost every aspect of local government business is underpinned by high quality address and street data.
GeoPlace's awards highlight the Street and Addressing Custodians' work helping to curate and maintain that data. Promoting their work helps to highlight the importance of their role, and the potential for this data to deliver ever-more efficient and effective services for their communities.
The full list of Award winners can be seen here.
For more information, Contact [email protected].
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Notes
A photograph of Sophie Birchall-Rogerson receiving the Award on behalf of the ERF department for their work on the project can be downloaded from here, and a photo with attendees at the 2019 conference is available from here.
About GeoPlace
GeoPlace LLP is a public sector limited liability partnership between the Local Government Association (LGA) and Ordnance Survey.
GeoPlace is a world class expert in address and street information management, working internationally as well as in the UK to help our partners and customers maximise the value of their spatial information for better decision making.
GeoPlace maintains a national infrastructure that supports the address and street information needs of the public and private sectors. Its work relies heavily on close working relationships with every local authority in England and Wales. This relationship has been developed over 15 years, to build the National Address Gazetteer infrastructure and National Street Gazetteer. Ordnance Survey develops the range of AddressBase products from the National Address Gazetteer and OS MasterMap Highways Network from the NSG. Both datasets underpin efficient and effective services, bringing direct service delivery benefits to users.
The Unique Property Reference Number (UPRN) and the Unique Street Reference Number (USRN) are the unique identifiers for every addressable location and street in Great Britain. They are created by local authorities who have the statutory authority to name and number every street and property and Ordnance Survey who identify objects on the landscape which may otherwise not attract an address.
These unique reference numbers link datasets together and share information with other organisations who also use them. They provide a comprehensive, complete and consistent identifier throughout a property's life cycle â from planning permission or street naming through to demolition.
See https://www.geoplace.co.uk.
