Benefits of the National Address Gazetteer

Products derived from the national address gazetteer database have the potential to deliver significant cost savings across the public sector. This is through the provision of a single definitive database which can assist with the streamlining of services, reduce duplication and facilitate partnership working and reduce missed or mismatched addresses. It can also increase operational benefits for all users by having one definitive product which pools the best of existing address and street database products.

• Use across government. The national address gazetteer is a key dataset within the PSMA. This means that all government bodies will be able to use, and will be reliant, on the national address gazetteer for a wide range of functions. All central government information which is currently linked to Ordnance Survey address products will also be linked with local authority LLPG and LSG data, allowing large efficiency savings by removing current matching exercises from both local and central government. It will open up information; previously disparate data sets will now be linked with a common identifier - the UPRN and the USRN.
  
  
• Cost savings. Membership of the PSMA is free at the point of use and is centrally funded by DCLG.
  
  
• Joining-up of services and information across government and other users of government information. As the public sector will be working from the same database, there will be a resulting increase in efficiency and reduction of duplication of effort for local government and all other public sector users.
  
  
• Improved partnership working between all of the organisations at the local level. Local authorities, park authorities, emergency services (fire, police and ambulance), health bodies, and central government bodies, for example, the Environment Agency, Land Registry, Valuation Office, HM Revenue and Customs, the Driving and Vehicle Licensing Agency and the Identity and Passport Service will all be able to easily pass the same information with one another. Public sector organisations are required to share data with a range of organisations, which are all using different datasets under differing licensing arrangements.
  
  
• Streamlining of services. A single national address gazetteer database will also produce a better joined up service for the public. The national address gazetteer will continue to bring benefits to each local authority by enhancing links between service functions and continuing to form the corporate information resource required to support the achievement of policy objectives, such as improved customer relationship and asset management.
  
  
• Efficiency improvements inside each local authority. The national address gazetteer will provide consistent links from addresses, produced by local authorities to the map base provided by Ordnance Survey. It will allow the local government community to further exploit geographic information. This type of information is a powerful tool for analysing and visualising environmental, statistical, social and financial information. This supports both the localism agenda and place based budget initiatives, and allows local government access to the latest data in order to plan, for example, new routes to schools and supporting services, asset sharing etc.
  
  
• Improvements in data quality. The partnership will reinforce the feed of address change information which will help to maintain the currency and accuracy of address change intelligence. It will also provide local government with a regular update of certain non-addressable information which is often difficult, if not impossible, for authorities to collect and maintain. This will be extremely useful for service delivery where services need both a postal address and non-postal address object in order to attach business specific information.
  
  
• INSPIRE (Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe). The national address gazetteer supports the Location Strategy’s concept of a 'Core Reference Geography' and the key principles of the INSPIRE directive. This includes the fundamental data processing principle that data should only be collected once, used many times and kept where it can be maintained most effectively. Addressing data will be published through the national address gazetteer meeting the requirements of the INSPIRE technical framework, substantially reducing the burden to local authorities to meet those requirements themselves.