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GeoPlace has announced the winners of its 2026 Improvement Awards, recognising outstanding work by local authorities in maintaining and improving the address and street data that underpins essential public services across England and Wales.
This year, Powys County Council has been named the overall winner of the Most Improved Address Authority Award, recognising the council’s substantial progress in improving the quality, consistency and reliability of its address data.
At the same time, Trafford Council has been recognised for its collaborative and resilient approach to improving street data quality following a particularly challenging set of circumstances affecting its Local Street Gazetteer.
The GeoPlace Improvement Awards celebrate the work of local authorities in maintaining the address and street data that supports services for residents, businesses, highways teams, utility providers and public sector partners across the country. These datasets are fundamental to the operation of modern local government, helping organisations coordinate activity, improve decision-making, reduce duplication and deliver more efficient services.
Improvement Award for Addresses
Powys County Council’s award reflects significant improvements made across a wide range of criteria. By the end of the year, the authority had achieved Gold status in almost all areas of the Improvement Schedule monitoring, with particularly strong progress in data linking and data consistency — key foundations for many council operations.
Address data acts as a ‘golden thread’ across local government, connecting systems, supporting service delivery and helping councils build a more accurate and reliable understanding of people, places and property. Powys County Council’s achievement reflects sustained, careful work to improve an ever-changing dataset and strengthen confidence in the information relied upon by services every day.
Improvement Award for Streets
Meanwhile, Trafford Council’s recognition highlights the importance of collaboration and resilience in maintaining high-quality street data. The council successfully worked through a difficult set of circumstances by engaging internal contractors, its software supplier, and support from regional chair Dave Matthews to resolve issues affecting its street data.
The improvement work undertaken by Trafford demonstrates the practical reality of data management. Some of the most valuable progress happens when organisations bring together the right expertise, rebuild confidence in processes, and work collaboratively to resolve complex challenges while keeping critical services running.
Local Street Gazetteers are maintained by Street Custodians and form part of the National Street Gazetteer (NSG), the definitive source of street data used across the UK to coordinate streetworks, manage traffic flow, issue permits and support essential highway and utility operations.
Nick Chapallaz, Managing Director of GeoPlace, said:
“Both Powys County Council and Trafford Council demonstrate the professionalism, resilience and commitment that sit behind high-quality address and street data.
Powys has shown what sustained focus on data improvement can achieve, making substantial progress across multiple areas and strengthening the consistency and reliability of information that supports countless local authority services.Trafford’s progress is equally important because it reflects the reality that data improvement is not always straightforward. Sometimes it requires collaboration, persistence and the ability to work through difficult circumstances while keeping services moving.
High-quality address and street data supports a huge amount of work that residents may never see directly, but rely on every day — from efficient council services to safer highways and better coordinated infrastructure works. These awards recognise the people behind that work and the care, professionalism and determination they bring to maintaining these nationally important datasets.”
Notes:
GeoPlace’s Exemplar Awards
The Most Improved Award is just one of GeoPlace’s Exemplar Awards, awarded every year to highlight the roles that Custodians play within their authorities. These awards enable that work to be more widely promoted to all parts of the organisation. It spotlights the high standard of local address and street data and shows how it underpins efficient, effective services.
From transformation projects to essential system improvements, the awards showcase innovation at every scale – all rooted in the thoughtful, accurate curation of location data. Promoting this work helps highlight not only the importance of these datasets, but also the pivotal role played by Street, Addressing and Street Naming and Numbering Custodians in delivering better outcomes for communities.
GeoPlace’s awards highlight the work in curating and maintaining that data. Promoting this work helps to highlight the importance of the Custodians’ role, and the potential for this data to deliver ever-more efficient and effective services for communities.
About GeoPlace
GeoPlace LLP is a public sector limited liability partnership between the Local Government Association (LGA) and Ordnance Survey.
GeoPlace is a world class expert in address and street information management, working internationally as well as in the UK to help our partners and customers maximise the value of their spatial information for better decision making.
GeoPlace maintains a national infrastructure that supports the address and street information needs of the public and private sectors. Its work relies heavily on close working relationships with every local authority in England and Wales.
This relationship has been developed over 16 years, to build the National Address Gazetteer infrastructure and National Street Gazetteer. Ordnance Survey develops the range of AddressBase products from the National Address Gazetteer and OS MasterMap Highways Network from the NSG. Both datasets underpin efficient and effective services, bringing direct service delivery benefits to users.
The Unique Property Reference Number (UPRN) and the Unique Street Reference Number (USRN) are the unique identifiers for every addressable location and street in Great Britain. They are created by local authorities who have the statutory authority to name and number every street and property and Ordnance Survey who identify objects on the landscape which may otherwise not attract an address.
These unique reference numbers link datasets together and share information with other organisations who also use them. They provide a comprehensive, complete and consistent identifier throughout a property's life cycle – from planning permission or street naming through to demolition.
See https://www.geoplace.co.uk.
