National Street Gazetteer Helps to Tackle Cold Snap Pothole Danger

London, 09 February, 2010 - Following the worst cold weather conditions in the UK for over 30 years, highway authorities across England and Wales are facing huge challenges in repairing newly formed potholes on our roads. The rich information held within the National Street Gazetteer (NSG), which is coordinated on behalf of local government by the Improvement and Development Agency, has greatly simplified this task by assisting the scheduling and communication of necessary repairs.

In Devon the highway authority is mustering its resources to tackle the problem head on with the NSG providing the basis for its planned assault on potholes. Over the next six weeks a specialist team made up of 26 groups of three to five people will take to the streets to inspect Devon's 8,000 mile long road network. The teams will set out to identify the potholes - each travelling in lightweight vehicles equipped to carry out intermediate repairs on all small potholes.

The crews are equipped with tablet PCs, GPS location and mobile network cards.  The NSG provides the background information on all of the routes identifying every road, its class and its maintenance category. GPS locates the exact position of each pothole on the road which is transmitted back to the routine maintenance system twice a day. The data held in the NSG then helps to determine the priority for larger pothole repairs and permanent repairs for those tackled in the initial campaign.

In South Wales the observations are familiar.  'We too have been badly affected by the severe weather and freezing temperatures, with a significant increase in the amount of potholes to be repaired,' said Jason Jenkins, Highways Network Manager for the South Wales Highways Authority.  'Our maintenance package for inspections, Works orders and Noticing regime now relies on the NSG for categorising the streets and identifying the work locations on Works tickets throughout the authority, so it has become indispensable,' continued Jenkins.

Simon Bailey the NSG custodian at Intelligent Addressing said, 'The NSG is now being used for the identification and coordination of road and street repairs across England and Wales.  Being able to schedule repairs based on road category and then to communicate exact locations to repair crews is a huge time saver and another brilliant example of this essential national dataset at work.'

Editorial contact:

William Allbrook, NLPG/NSG Specialist, Tel:+44(0)1666 826641, Email: william@allbrook.net

Intelligent Addressing contact:
Gayle Gander, Head of Marketing, Tel: +44(0)207 747 3500, E-mail: ggander@intelligent-addressing.co.uk, Web: www.intelligent-addressing.co.uk

Notes to editors

The National Street Gazetteer (NSG) is a government initiative to create an unambiguous referencing system, using Unique Street Reference Numbers (USRNs) with which to identify any length of highway or road in England and Wales. Set up initially to improve highway maintenance, under the New Roads and Street Works Act, the NSG enables Utility companies and local councils to coordinate and know where and when to dig their holes. Under legislation each highway authority is required to create and maintain its own Local Street Gazetteer (LSG) and Additional Street Data (ASD), which is then compiled into one master index, the NSG, for access by others via the NSG online hub. The NSG is run on behalf of local government by Local Government Information House (LGIH) with Intelligent Addressing (IA) acting as the national custodian and operator of the NSG hub.

Local Government Information House (LGIH) is part of the Improvement and Development Agency (IDeA).  LGIH concentrates on core projects that have maximum benefit for the whole of local government. To this end, LGIH focuses on geographical information-related projects, as the standardisation of this type of data affects more than 80 per cent of what local government does.

The Improvement and Development Agency (IDeA) works in partnership with all councils, to enhance the performance of the best, accelerate the speed of improvement of the rest, and develop the sector as a whole.