2011 National Gazetteers Exemplar Awards Winners Announced

GeoPlace LLP has announced the winners of the 2011 National Gazetteers Exemplar Awards. The awards recognise the outstanding achievements of local authorities, local partnerships, police forces and fire and rescue services, in the creation, maintenance and utilisation of the National Gazetteers.
The 2011 Exemplar Awards will be presented today at the ‘Everything happens Somewhere’ conference, which is taking place at Albert Hall in Nottingham. Both the awards and the conference aim to share, reward and celebrate best practice which brings service improvements and efficiencies through the effective management of address and street information.

GeoPlace is a public sector limited liability partnership between the Local Government Association and Ordnance Survey. GeoPlace’s role is to create and maintain national databases of address and street data sourced from local authorities in England and Wales, brought together with Ordnance Survey data. These national databases provide definitive spatial address and street data as an enabler for public sector improvement and wider application in other sectors.

The 2011 Exemplar Award categories and winners are as follows.

Citizen Award Winner: Merseyside Fire & Rescue Service. The Citizen Award is intended to reward projects where benefits have been delivered to citizens or businesses using the National Gazetteers.

Financial Award Winner: Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council. This award intends to capture projects which can demonstrate real financial savings through the use of the National Gazetteers.

Green Award Winner: Northumberland County Council. This award aims to capture the range of examples where the National Gazetteers have been used for greener outcomes. Projects should have either reduced environmental impact or increased greener outcomes.

Integration Award Winner: Bristol City Council, South Gloucestershire Council, Bath and North East Somerset Council, North Somerset District Council, Police, Fire & Ambulance Emergency Services, Primary Care Trusts and the NHS in the greater Bristol Area. This award seeks to recognise those who are able to show how the National Gazetteers are linked to all other council services, or local partnerships and the benefits of these linkages.

Technology Award Winner: West Midland Fire & Rescue Service. This award is looking for innovative examples of the application of technology using the National Gazetteers. This category could include projects using open source software; creating mash ups or other technological solutions.

Naming Award Winner: Colchester Borough Council. This award is given to the candidate who the judges feel has the most innovative example of street naming which is relevant both to local history and geographical context.

The winners will be documented into a case studies booklet that will be made available via the GeoPlace website.

Contacts:
Gayle Gander, Head of Marketing, GeoPlace, +44(0)207 747 3500, E-mail:
gayle.gander@geoplace.co.uk, www.geoplace.co.uk

GeoPlace

GeoPlace is a public sector limited liability partnership between the Local Government Group and Ordnance Survey. Our vision is to be the recognised centre of excellence for spatial address and street information management in Great Britain.

GeoPlace’s role is to create and maintain definitive spatial national address and street databases (the National Gazetteers) for England and Wales. Through agreement with Scotland’s Improvement Service, the plan is to extend the coverage to Scotland.

GeoPlace maintains these databases – the National Gazetteers - by building upon existing local government addressing and street information management processes and combining the resulting data with data provided by Ordnance Survey, Royal Mail and the Valuation Office Agency. GeoPlace’s databases are maintained by the regular receipt and validation of update files from 348 LLPGs (Local Land and Property Gazetteers), maintained by contributing local authorities and updates from 174 LSGs (Local Street Gazetteers) maintained by contributing local highway authorities. The local authority sourced data is matched to regular updates of data from, Ordnance Survey, Royal Mail and the Valuation Office Agency. GeoPlace’s address database is made available as a range of products: AddressBase™ by Ordnance Survey. As a separate process, the National Street Gazetteer is made available by GeoPlace to underpin statutory notification of streetworks. GeoPlace is planning to bring together local authority street data with Ordnance Survey’s street data under a similar framework as has been done with addresses.

Local Government Association

The Local Government Association is a political organisation that is run by its members. The LGA always strives to agree a common cross-party position on issues and to speak with one voice on behalf of local government. It aims to set the political agenda and speak in the national media on the issues that matter to council members

Ordnance Survey

Ordnance Survey is Great Britain’s national mapping agency, providing the most accurate and up-to-date geographic data, relied on by government, business and individuals. Ordnance Survey utilises the National Address Gazetteer Database in the creation of the AddressBase range of products available for use in both the public and commercial sectors.

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