Gazetteers @ GIS Day

Every address. Every street. Everything happens somewhere.

Behind the scenes, Address and Street Custodians work across local authorities to maintain the nation’s trusted geographic data — address and street data with its associated Unique Property Reference Numbers (UPRNs) and Unique Street Reference Numbers (USRNs). Their work ensures that essential public services, from emergency response to waste collection, can operate efficiently and accurately every day.

Gazetteers @ GIS Day is a chance to recognise these Custodians — the data professionals whose attention to detail keeps the UK’s authoritative address and street datasets current, reliable, and ready for use across government, the emergency services, utilities, and the private sector.

Address and Street Custodians create and maintain local address and street data and ensure consistency between the records for their area.

For local authorities, accurate address and street data are essential to delivering efficient, joined-up public services. UPRNs and USRNs link information across departments — from planning and highways to social care, housing management, and emergency management. This common data foundation reduces duplication, improves decision-making, and supports digital transformation. 

By maintaining high-quality local data, Custodians help councils target resources where they’re needed most and provide better outcomes for residents and communities.

For the emergency services too, accurate geographic data is absolutely vital. A reminder of the great work that local authorities does in maintaining accurate addressing : “There is no doubt in my mind that accurate address data saves lives, probably every day”.

• UPRNs and USRNs link information across departments and services, enabling interoperability
• Custodians ensure data quality, consistency and adherence to standards, which helps avoid costly duplication, fragmentation or manual workarounds
• real-world benefits: quicker emergency responses, fraud reduction, stronger social care planning and improved data sharing across health, housing and third-party services
• it enables councils to ask: “What do we know about this address or street?” and get a single, authoritative answer—not a fragmented set of records
• accurate local data underpins national systems and policy decisions.

Join us in celebrating the vital role of Address and Street Custodians this Gazetteers@GIS Day. 

Share your data infographics that we’ve prepared for you, highlight your team’s achievements and help raise awareness of the value of your high-quality local data that supports national outcomes. And join us on 19th November for a Teams quiz - email [email protected] to sign up.

Every property, street, and building in the UK relies on accurate addressing — and that starts with Street Naming and Numbering (SNN). We've put together videos, infographics and interviews to resource SNN Officers for Gazetteers @ GIS Day.