Andy Gosney inspects GeoPlace

Until now, many experts in the field have believed that the provision of UK address data has been muddled and wasteful. For a decade, different public bodies in England and Wales have effectively competed to produce a definitive national gazetteer.  On one hand, Ordnance Survey (OS) has used data from Royal Mail’s Postcode Address File (PAF), adding a geocode or reference to place that address on the map and merging other government data to create products such as OS MasterMap®Address Layer 2 (AL2).

Quite separately, local government produced the National Land & Property Gazetteer (NLPG). This features addresses created and maintained by local authorities and then qualified and stitched together into a national dataset by the private company Intelligent Addressing. Rather than cooperating, each camp argued its product was superior. Yet studies by the Office of National Statistics showed that each dataset had flaws and only an expensive combination of the two would achieve close to a definitive dataset suitable for the census.

Quietly over the past year, the Local Government Group (LGG) and OS began negotiating a solution. The result is GeoPlace, a joint venture between LGG and OS which has acquired Intelligent Addressing. The new company will continue the work of NLPG and combine the extra elements present in the OS addressing products, especially the greater detail and non postal addresses from AL2.

This new combined product will be known as the National Address Gazetteer (NAG). Over the next three years, NAG will be rolled out to replace the existing, disparate datasets used by the private and public sectors. NAG will also be included in the Public Sector Mapping Agreement (PSMA) to allow unrestricted use by all qualified public sector bodies and affiliates.

The solution is not without its critics and there are issues that require attention: Royal Mail’s PAF royalty claims; the absence of Scottish records; impact on the private sector and the fact that key public bodies such as utilities not covered by the PSMA may find the transition to NAG expensive. These are all issues which need to be resolved.

However, many more are championing the new venture and applauding the efficiency improvements it will bring about. After recent approval from the Office of Fair Trading, GeoPlace has been effectively live since 1st April. 

Sigma Seven will continue to support all the relevant datasets our customers use. Thanks to our NLPG Mobile Manager tool, we can also play a significant role in maintaining quality levels for NAG and the other data that our customers collect and manage.