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One of the great joys of working at GeoPlace is having a national view of how local authorities manage their Street and Address Gazetteers and how they use them across their councils. High profile areas such as DfT Street Manager, council tax, asset management and electoral registration often grab the attention. But it’s the smaller pockets of ingenuity that quietly deliver the biggest quality of life improvements for the people doing the work.
GeoPlace is in a unique position to shine a light on these examples through exemplars, case studies and regional meetings in the hope that innovative ideas will inspire others and permeate across all councils. However, we also know that getting traction can be a real struggle for Custodians, who are often trying to be the change maker while also keeping the engine running and doing so under increasing pressure.
So, what if there were a once in a career opportunity to come together and share that collective expertise; to build the gazetteer ecosystems many of us have dreamt of?
Local government reorganisation - a catalyst for change
Local government reorganisation (LGR) has the potential to be exactly that catalyst, replacing two tier authorities with larger single tier authorities across England.
There are currently:
- 318 district and unitary authorities, each responsible for an Address Gazetteer
- 175 county and unitary authorities, each responsible for a Street Gazetteer.
LGR will mean that every new unitary authority will be responsible for a single Address Gazetteer and a single Street Gazetteer. Many officers who are currently neighbours will soon be working within the same organisation.
This kind of change can feel daunting. But our experience of previous organisational changes is that they frequently lead to stronger teams and shared overheads, freeing up time to focus on what really matters.
Using USRNs and UPRNs to steady the ship
Times of uncertainty are where USRNs and UPRNs really come into their own. They offer unique, consistent identifiers that move with the data from old organisations to new ones. That means much of the data that needs to be combined already has a primary key in place. We’ve already published some guidance on the value of USRNs and UPRNs and how ‘place’ is the anchor for LGR. And this blog will be the first of many, guiding Custodians on specific data considerations.
Adopting geospatial standards takes you one step further, but the unique identifiers are the first, essential building blocks for bringing datasets together across organisations.
While we await confirmation of the LGR changes from April 2028, now is the perfect time to begin preparations. Start by:
- cataloguing the datasets you currently hold
- ensuring that, wherever appropriate, they carry the relevant USRNs and/or UPRNs
- verifying that your data is of a high standard, and for Address gazetteers ensure that GeoPlace have the most up to date data by completing a resynchronisation.
Engage early with your GMS supplier
Engaging with your Gazetteer Management System (GMS) supplier early in the process is essential. Many suppliers will already have experience of mergers and splits - for example, the work in Cumbria: and may have solutions ready that can help you. Other case studies are available here.
Beyond your GMS, you will also have other systems that consume gazetteer data. You will need to consider how those systems will be separated or joined together in the new structures. Once the final LGR boundaries are confirmed, creating a vector layer of those boundaries will allow you to analyse the data in each system and then split or merge it as required.
Shortly after the confirmation of the new authorities, GeoPlace will issue a ‘Gazetteer data manager for new unitary status councils guide’. This will highlight everything from new authority codes, UPRN and USRN ranges and data attribute changes, through to key points for consideration and an indicative timetable. GeoPlace will set up regular catch ups with all data custodians to ensure that you have the opportunity to ask any questions along the way.
One question that comes through to our Helpdesk is whether data needs to be merged into one gazetteer or split into more than one gazetteer. Our experience shows that consolidating or splitting the gazetteers to match the new authority boundaries is the only way to ensure that the best quality data is available. This is a process that we are keen to discuss with each authority going through reorganisation at the earliest possible stage. Please do contact us directly with more in-depth technical questions such as this.
Make the gazetteer transition a managed project
Alongside this, we strongly recommend that someone in the new authority’s transition team is assigned as a project manager for bringing the gazetteers together. We have seen this work extremely well where the project manager is not an existing Custodian, but someone who can:
- navigate gazetteer requirements up and down the organisational structure
- make and secure decisions on budgets and priorities.
A once in a generation opportunity
The excellent community among Custodians is already a huge strength. Bringing that shared expertise together into single teams in new authorities is a fantastic opportunity to build on the existing success of the gazetteers.
With LGR just around the corner, now is the time to:
- start putting down on paper what your dream gazetteer setup would look like
- share and refine those ideas with your neighbours and future colleagues
- Find local government reorganisation resources here.
GeoPlace will be here to help, as always.
