And Then There Was One …
The announcement of the joint venture called “GeoPlace” between The Local Government Group and Ordnance Survey is currently the talking point amongst LLPG custodians throughout England and Wales for a variety of reasons.
The joint venture will see the formation of the National Address Gazetteer (NAG), which consolidates the NLPG and Ordnance Survey’s AL2 (which in turn includes licensed elements of Royal Mail’s PAF). But what does this mean? Well it means that instead of having multiple address databases available on the market, there will now be only one definitive address dataset. To an LLPG custodian this is exactly what we have been working towards and now this will soon become a reality.
In the past, local authorities had a range of address products to choose from (financial, licensing or accuracy constraints notwithstanding). In some cases, this has lead to a plethora of various databases being used within a council rather than just one – the NLPG. This is where the NAG really shines as it combines the above into a single product with the NLPG and UPRN at its core.
The impact of this is significant and can be summed up by asking yourself the following question: “What address databases does your local authority use that is not the NLPG?”. The answer(s) to this can then be replaced (internal constraints permitting) with the NAG. When the NAG launches, it will be covered within the costs of the PSMA and therefore boasts potential for huge cost savings on licensing.
I mentioned that this has been a talking point amongst custodians and I’m not wrong … all LLPG custodians are currently working on a long process of verifying address anomalies in preparation for the NAG. But as the saying goes, no pain no gain!
