Guidance published on Basic Land and Property Unit polygons

London, 11^th October 2012 - GeoPlace has published a guidance document aimed at local authorities in England and Wales who wish to create and maintain Basic Land and Property Unit (BLPU) polygons.  The guidance is also aimed at those that want to understand the reasons and business benefits of maintaining this type of data.

The guidance was compiled by a Working Group responding to requests from the local authority community who were seeking assistance on creating and maintaining this type of information more efficiently and consistently across local government.  The guidance should be read in conjunction with the Data Entry Conventions for the NLPG  and Data Transfer Format v7.3  documents.  The contents of the guidance are optional, aimed at authorities who wish to create and maintain this type of information.

The Working Group undertook a wide ranging consultation process which informed the final document.

The guidance documents the following areas, together with a number of examples:

• business process
• business rules
• rule base for data entry
• conventions for maintenance of the data
• business case and justification of undertaking the creation of BLPU polygons.

The guidance states that the creation of BLPU polygons has wide-ranging benefits for a local authority, particularly in the following departments:

• Building control
• Land charges
• Social services
• Education
• Transport
• Planning
• Economic development

The Working Group concluded that whilst the creation of BLPU polygons requires an initial investment, the return on that investment can be quickly realised with discernible quantitative and qualitative benefits across the whole organisation and partner organisations, with at least 25% efficiency savings to be realised.

The Reference Document Data Entry Conventions and Best Practice for Basic Land and Property Unit (BLPU) Polygons, (DEC-BLPU-P) Version 1, published September 2012 can be seen at http://www.iahub.net/docs/1349443753737.pdf

The Consultation Response to the Data Entry Conventions and Best Practice for Basic Land and Property Unit (BLPU) Polygons, Version 0, published September 2012 can be seen at http://www.iahub.net/docs/1349443791262.pdf

Contacts:

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

GeoPlace Announce Agenda for the 2012 Everything Happens Somewhere Conference

London, 12^th September 2012 – GeoPlace, the centre of excellence for the management of spatial address information and streets data for Great Britain, is pleased to announce the agenda for the forthcoming ‘Everything Happpens Somewhere’ conference.

Being held in London on 25^th October, the conference aims to support local government address and street information specialists, together with street naming and numbering officials.  All working in those professions are invited free of charge.

Primary to the day will be six sessions, repeated throughout the afternoon, all intended to offer valuable information to delegates.  Session One will advise on how to promote address and street data within a local authority, whilst Session Two will look at the reasons and benefits of linking VOA and PAF data to the AddressBase products.

Session Three, led by the National Land and Property Gazetteer Custodian, will highlight tips and topics that could be useful to local authority work and give information on how to use the current Data Entry Conventions documents to maintain excellent address data.  Session Four will be similarly focused on street data.

Session Five will look at local authority use of AddressBase and Session Six will focus on a discussion about including public rights of way within local street data.

The Everything Happens Somewhere conference will also see the presentation of the Exemplar Awards, which recognise the vital role address and street information professionals play in local service delivery.   Celebrating achievement, innovation, creativity, best practice and hard work, the main categories include:

• Best Example of Street Naming and Numbering Policy Implementation Award, sponsored by LGA
• Citizen Award, sponsored by UK Location
• Improvement and Efficiency Award, sponsored by the Local Government Association
• Integration Award, sponsored by Ordnance Survey
• Services Award, sponsored by Socitm
• Peer Award for English and Welsh authorities
• Scottish Address Gazetteer Custodian of the Year

Speaking of the conference, Richard Mason, Managing Director of GeoPlace said, “Now in its seventh year, the Everything Happens Somewhere conference has consistently provided the Country’s biggest forum for address and street information specialists.”

“In the tough economic climate, their work is even more vital in driving local authority efficiency and it is our aim to facilitate and aid this work through this years’ conference.”

For more information about the conference or to register as a delegate, please visit www.geoplace.co.uk.

Contacts:

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

GeoPlace Exemplar Awards attracts heavyweight support

GeoPlace has announced that it has secured the backing of the Society of IT Management (Socitm), UK Location, the Local Government Association (LGA) and Ordnance Survey, as Award supporters for its annual GeoPlace Exemplar Awards.

Each of the supporting organisations recognises the need for accurate, up-to-date information on local addresses and streets and the impact that this has across the economy and the whole of the public sector.  Knowing where people and assets are, makes a substantial difference to the efficiency with which public services are delivered.

‘The Services Award’, seeks to identify projects that assist with the streamlining and joining-up of services from different departments.  Socitm’s remit is to provide a forum for the promotion, use and development of ICT good practice and for information enabled local public services transformation in the UK.  By supporting this Award, Socitm underlines the crucial role of its members in employing address and street information to join-up and transform services.

UK Location is supporting the ‘Citizen Award’ which will be awarded to the organisation with the best example of a project underpinned by address or street data that delivers services to citizens.  UK Location focuses on improving the sharing and re-use of public sector location information to enable joined up services for government, business and citizens. 

The LGA, with its focus on supporting, promoting and improving local government is supporting the ‘Improvement and Efficiency Award’ which will identify projects that have led to efficiency savings, or innovation or improvement for local government.  As local government has the statutory responsibility for street naming and numbering, the LGA is also supporting the ‘Best Example of Street Naming and Numbering Policy Implementation Award’.

Ordnance Survey’s role is to collect, maintain and distribute the most accurate and up-to-date geographic information of the whole country.  Supporting the ‘Integration Award’ with its emphasis on how addressing and street datasets are linked to council services or local partnerships provides a natural linkage to its role.

The Awards celebrate excellence in address and street information enabled service delivery across local government.  They recognise the vital role address and street information professionals play in local service delivery. They celebrate their achievements, providing external acknowledgement of innovation, creativity, best practice, hard work and achievement.

For more information about the Exemplar Awards and how to enter, see www.geoplace.co.uk

GeoPlace Contact:

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

The publication of AGI member press releases is a member service. The AGI neither approves or endorses the contents of member's press releases, nor makes any assurance of their factual accuracy.

GeoPlace features in Best Practice initiative

Following the award given to GeoPlace at the EUROGI/eSDI-Net Awards in November 2011, GeoPlace now features within an on-line database of Best Practice case studies of Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI) hosted on the EUROGI website.

The EUROGI/eSDI-Net Awards publicise digital geographic information (GI) initiatives for content providers and users and increases awareness of the importance of SDIs for reuse.  They aim to highlight excellence, promote the reuse of information and the unnecessary duplication of resources.

The GeoPlace case study focuses on the establishment of the National Address Gazetteer Database. It described how the National Address Gazetteer Database was created and how it is being maintained as an intelligent, comprehensive, current address and street database. The entry also looked at how it is being shared amongst the whole of the public sector under the terms of the Public Sector Mapping Agreement (PSMA) as well as the wider commercial market.

The Awarding processes was monitored by a professional jury comprised of representatives from the Joint Research Centre-EC, ESRI, University of Nottingham, GIM international, Open Source Geospatial Foundation, Afigéo, Open Geospatial Consortium, AMFM GIS Italia, RSW Geomatics and 2 former eSDI-Net Award winners: CRIGE-PACA (France) and Gobierno de La Rioja (Spain) and chaired by Professor Ian Masser, University College of London.

During the judging process Professor Masser stated that “Each SDI is a special case" and with this assumption in mind, the jury decided not to look for "the best SDI", but for various SDIs that were excellent in different aspects.  The GeoPlace entry was awarded within the ‘Quality and Quantity’ category.

All the case studies can be seen at http://eurogi.org/esdinet-assessment/sdi-best-practice-database.html.

The publication of AGI member press releases is a member service. The AGI neither approves or endorses the contents of member's press releases, nor makes any assurance of their factual accuracy.

Warrington innovating to help most vulnerable

London, 16 February 2012 - Warrington Borough Council is using its Local Land and Property Gazetteer (LLPG) to underpin a project to identify differences in social and geographical inequalities. The ‘Closing the Gap’ programme brings together key public sector partners, as well as representatives from the third sector and local businesses, to develop new ways of working together to help support the most vulnerable citizens.

In recent years Warrington has prospered and is recognised as one of the fastest growing economies in the country. However, despite overall gains in prosperity and improvements in quality of life, these gains have not been distributed equally. As a result Warrington has stark inequalities and has implemented a partnership programme to address this.

A core objective of the ‘Closing the Gap’ programme is to ensure that by 2030 no parts of Warrington would be included in the lowest 10% most deprived nationally.  The aim is therefore to close the gap between the affluent and the struggling.  To do this, it was necessary to identify which areas fell into this category and understand who lives there. Once this exercise was completed it would then be possible to focus on what services residents already use, what additional services may provide benefit and how best to engage with individual residents and communities.

James Wharfe, Senior GIS Analyst at Warrington Borough Council said: “The LLPG was the most comprehensive address database available and was a vital component in the early stages of the project. Information derived from the LLPG was combined with social marketing information, crime, health, education and emergency services data to identify those areas requiring attention. We could then create profiles for each area and look at ways to address the issues.”

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