Councils Across the Country Mark Location Day

Sixty-nine local authorities across England and Wales are taking part in ‘Gazetteers@GIS Day’, an initiative that highlights the importance of location and how location information is created by councils.

Through a range of activities such as manning stands, running quizzes and competitions, holding presentations and even giving out sweets, pens and balloons, council Address and Street Custodians will demonstrate the importance of the information that they maintain on behalf of their council.

Council produced Address and Street data is an essential part of two products available from Ordnance Survey; AddressBase and OS MasterMap Highways Network. Both products are widely used by the public and private sectors to underpin a range of activities. For example, the data:

• helps emergency responders share information more effectively
• enables utilities to connect services to a new home
• is used by the Office for National Statistics to collect census data
• helps packages be delivered to your house
• is used by HMRC to detect fraudulent activity across tax systems
• is part of the Individual Electoral Registration programme
• used for risk assessment and underwriting by insurance companies
• provides the basis of a wide range of council services such as the collection of local taxation, electoral
• registration, waste management, school admissions to name a few

In addition to its usefulness in direct service provision, a recent GeoPlace commissioned study 'Cost-Benefit Analysis of Address and Street Data for Local Authorities and Emergency Services in England and Wales', projected net benefits up to £202 million by 2020 from better use of the address and street data that councils create and maintain. Based on the current rates of adoption, this represents a Return on Investment after discounting of 4:1.

The study outlines the benefits afforded to local authorities in a number of areas including; reduced data duplication and integration, improved tax revenues, channel shift and route optimisation in waste management.

GeoPlace works with every council in England and Wales to build and maintain the National Address Gazetteer and the National Street Gazetteer, which includes the Address and Street data from every authority.

As part of the celebrations for Gazetteers@GIS Day, GeoPlace has made available a toolkit to help local authority Address and Street Custodians promote the day and ‘start the conversation’ about the importance of location and value of within their council.