ITEM 10
ITEM 10
Executive – 12 September 2002
CREATION OF LOCAL LAND AND PROPERTY GAZETTEER (LLPG)
Report of:
The Chief of Legal and Property services
Statutory Powers:
Section 111 of Local Government Act 1972
Budgetary Implications:
£4,750 for address matching exercise, circa
£4,500 for software and data transfer. Plus
contingency of 10%. (From E Government
budget). Majority of staff time/involvement
from
existing
resources.
Additional,
temporary staff to provide administrative
and clerical support and/or assistance on the
project – up to £7,500 from E Government
monies. Corporate gazetteer software –
between £5,000 to £10,000. Additional
hardware, (dependant on final choice of
software), up to £5,000.
Purpose of Report
1.
To highlight the importance of creating a Local Land and Property Gazetteer, and to
seek agreement and the financial resources to progress the project.
RECOMMENDATION
The Executive RESOLVES that the NLPG/LLPG Licence Agreement be signed
on behalf of the Council and that the Chief of Legal and Property Services be
authorised to progress the creation of an LLPG subject to a budget limitation of
£17,675 for gazetteer creation, up to a maximum of £10,000 for corporate
gazetteer software and up to a maximum of £5,000 for additional hardware (if
required).
Background
2.
Council has made a commitment to improve access to services, it also made a
commitment in last years I.E.G. statement to progress this project. The Government
has set 2005 as the target date for the introduction of electronic service delivery. By
this date it is required that all services, capable of delivery by electronic means,
should be delivered in this manner. In order to improve service delivery, and meet the
2005 target, it is essential that the necessary investment in information infrastructure
is made.
3.
The Government has awarded £200,000 to this Council on the basis of its last I.E.G.
Statement and will award a further £200,000 providing the Council can demonstrate
progress on this and its other promises.
4.
There are a number of key national initiatives aimed at improving service delivery in
this area. Three major ones worthy of particular mention are:42
(a)
The National Land Information Service (NLIS). Initially this is an
electronic Land Charge search service, but in time it is intended that it will
become a means of accessing all land or property based information.
(b)
The Rolling Electoral Register (LASER). The first step towards e-voting,
LASER will link together all local electoral registers systems. Built to a
common standard data will be managed locally and accessed nationally.
People moving between different voting areas will be able to vote in their new
constituency almost immediately.
(c)
National Land Use Database (NLUD) – A national database of derelict sites
and other previously used land compiled from information obtained from local
authorities. The aim being the re-development of such land before ‘green
field’ sites.
5.
Before these initiatives, or effective electronic service delivery, can succeed Local
Authority data has to be structured correctly and the necessary infrastructure must be
in place.
6.
The most important infrastructure requirement is a common address database, (built to
a British Standard BS 7666), for all property based information. The concept of a
National Land and Property Gazetteer (NLPG) has therefore been developed. This
national gazetteer will in effect be an amalgamation of Local Land and Property
Gazetteers (LLPG) that will be created and maintained by each Local Authority. A
draft/embryo NLPG has already been created, (by the Local Government Information
House – LGIH, a company wholly owned by the IDeA), for use within the NLIS
project. This has been compiled from nationally available datasets and has not had
any data cleaning done, it contains inaccuracies, and cannot therefore be considered as
definitive. Currently 53% of addresses in the NLPG are maintained by Local
Authorities.
The LLPG Project
7.
Whilst paragraph 4 identifies some national projects it should not be assumed that the
creation of a LLPG/NLPG is solely required for these purposes. Rather the creation
of the Local Land and Property Gazetteer is an essential building block in the
process of joining information/data, and therefore services, together to aid the
development and implementation of E Government. It not only enables datasets to
relate to one another but facilitates links with external ones too. This is a pre-requisite
to a citizen being able to draw information about a particular property without having
to worry about where information is stored or indeed who holds it.
8.
There are three main drivers to the NLPG initiative:
a)
Increasing pressure on local authorities to improve the public's
perception of their services.
Local government interfaces more frequently with the public than other parts of
government. In order to improve services, councils have started to implement "one
stop shops" in an attempt to resolve enquiries from the public swiftly and efficiently.
Not only is customer satisfaction is improved ( there is no bigger “switch off” than
being passed from pillar to post) but opportunities are there to make savings by
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ensuring that work is done at an appropriate level. Virtually all enquiries contain
address information. For these enquiries to be dealt with effectively on first contact,
each address must be linked to a range of back office databases via a master address
list.
b)
The need to join-up with the wider public sector.
Some enquiries, for example benefits applications, need to be linked to services
managed by other parts of government. A more widely used master address list can
underpin these systems. For example, common referencing would enable data to be
exchanged and distributed more economically and accurately between councils, NHS,
DWP, Valuation Office, HMLR, Regional planning, DOT, ODPM and the Planning
Inspectorate.
c)
The need to reduce costs to achieve best value
Local government is responsible for managing the largest and most diverse portfolio
of land and property related information in the United Kingdom and it has been
recognized that over 85% of these databases use addresses for referencing. It was also
recognized that it is far more efficient to collect a master address list once and share it
amongst all users - address-change intelligence frequently being critical to their
function (planning, Electoral Roll, Housing, Council Tax, education, social services,
environmental health etc). Substantially better and more consistent data and service
quality will also result.
9.
10.
The complexity and the amount of work required to complete this project should not
be under estimated. Essentially however there are three main individual ‘components’
to the project:
(a)
The National Street Gazetteer – this has been compiled by local highway
Authorities (DCC). Originally this was created to assist in the management of
street works. It is a component part of the NLPG in that the ‘street’ and ‘town’
fields are drawn directly from the NSG. The first stage is to check and correct
this database in consultation with DCC. Some work on this has already been
undertaken.
(b)
Match existing address data – address data from various Council systems (eg
Council Tax, N.N.D.R., Electoral Register) have to be matched against other
data- sets (Ordnance Survey Address Point, and the current draft/embryo
NLPG). From this address matching will come the first draft LLPG.
(c)
Clean address data – arising from the address matching exercise there will be
a percentage of ‘problems’ and mismatches. For example one system might
address a property as ‘flat 1’, another might have an address of ‘ground floor
flat’; the question to be resolved in this example is, are they one and the same?
Once any anomalies have been resolved and a definitive address database has
been created with cross references to addresses held in other systems, data can
be loaded into a gazetteer maintenance software system.
Creating the gazetteer is a somewhat labour intensive process. Checking the street
gazetteer is likely to take several weeks. The address matching process can be
undertaken by a number of specialist companies. The charge for this service is £4,750
from Intelligent Addressing under an agreement with the IDeA to provide the service
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to Local Authorities for a fixed price. It is proposed that this company undertake this
work.
11.
The third part of the process, cleaning address data, is likely to take the longest.
Experience at other authorities suggests that the amount of work can vary
dramatically, (although a high percentage of the problems seem to originate from
problems with the NSG). Sorting these problems will require significant officer time
and will need good local knowledge. It is envisaged that existing staff will be
involved on this work, although there may be a need for some temporary additional
staff to assist with this, or to provide cover for staff directly involved in the project the employment of the equivalent of one person for six months might be necessary
and an estimate of cost for this is included in the Budgetary Implications (although
this could take the form of two people for three months).
12.
The resulting gazetteer would be very much more than a simple database of postal
addresses. The ultimate intention is to create a gazetteer that holds an ‘address’ for all
areas of land, even fields, waste land, car parks etc. Thus any information that the
council holds about any area of land would in turn link to the gazetteer. As well as
having a textual entry for each address there would also be a spatial reference.
Initially this will only be ‘x’ ‘y’ spatial co-ordinates. Longer term, the extent
(polygon) of the property would be included. The gazetteer would therefore be fully
integrated into Geographical Information Systems (GIS).
13.
It is proposed that initially that gazetteer software from MVM be used to build and
hold the first version of the LLPG. The Council already has a BS7666 compliant
gazetteer as part of the MVM 20/20 Planning system. Once the LLPG has been
created the resulting data would be transferred into Planner 20/20 replacing the
Ordnance Survey data that the system currently uses. There would be a charge from
MVM of approximately £4,500 to set up a stand alone gazetteer and transfer the
resulting data to Planner 20/20. If the Council were to adopt the MVM software as a
‘corporate solution’ there would be an additional charge of (currently) £6,000 for a
site licence. There are a number of other companies offering corporate gazetteer
software. Costs would obviously vary but are likely to be of a similar amount - (an
estimate of between £5,000 and £10,000 is included in the budgetary implications). A
final decision on this would be made at the end of the gazetteer creation process and
would be based on usual criteria (cost, functionality, compatibility etc.). Corporate
implementation could also result in a need for additional/new hardware. This is
somewhat dependant on the final choice of software. An estimate of a maximum of
£5,000 has been included to cover this eventuality.
14.
In order to submit data from our LLPG to the NLPG the Council has to have a licence
agreement with the Local Government Information House (LGIH). This is a company
wholly owned by the IDeA. The LGIH are the custodians of the national gazetteer and
they in turn licence its use to other bodies eg. NLIS. The licence agreement has to be
signed before the address matching process can begin as the Council will need access
to the draft NLPG.
15.
The long term maintenance of the gazetteer is vitally important. The Land Charges
section is currently responsible for street naming and numbering and the maintenance
of the gazetteer should be seen as part of that statutory function. At this time it is
difficult to estimate the effect of maintaining the Gazetteer, however it is likely to
result in a net increase in workload for the section, offset in whole or in part by
improved working practices.
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16.
Once the gazetteer has been created, it is important that links are in place, and
maintained, between it and other Council systems. There are various ways of
achieving this, and differing opinions on which way is the best; eg. is it better to update the address automatically from the gazetteer or should the decision be left to the
data owners to do it manually? The gazetteer will in any event hold the ‘definitive’
BS7666 address, (linked to a Unique Property Reference Number – UPRN), and hold
cross references entries in other databases. Other systems should also hold this UPRN
– thus the link to the gazetteer. The best method of maintaining addresses and links to
other systems will be decided during the project period.
Conclusion
17.
The compilation of the LLPG is a fundamental requirement for the provision of
effective ‘E Government service delivery’. It is required for the effective operation of
the NLIS, electronic conveyancing and the LASER Project. To improve the quality
and access of services to the public it is important that data in various systems can
link to/or have a reference to a common address database. The LLPG will provide that
link. In the future all applications will link to the LLPG.
18.
The creation of the LLPG is included in the Council IEG Statement. Failure to make
satisfactory progress with this would result in funding for E
Government/modernisation projects being withheld. Funding for the creation of the
gazetteer would indeed come from the E Government budget.
19.
The Council’s legal section has considered the licence agreement, and its
implications. Although there are always compromises and inherent risks in
partnership working the Local Government Information House operates under the
aegis of the IDeA which has been set up specifically to promote the interests of local
authorities. It is considered that the risks of not proceeding with signing the agreement
and progressing with the work far outweigh the risks of positively embracing it.
20.
Background information regarding the National Land and Property Gazetteer and
associated projects, obtained from the IDeA website, are included in the appendix
accompanying this report. A draft project plan is also attached.
G Rowe
Chief of Legal and Property Services
Executive
12 September 2002
P West
Drawing Office Manager
Appendices:
1 – Project Plan & timescale,
2 – NLPG within the context of other initiatives,
3 – Background to the project,
4 – How the NLPG/LLPG is produced,
5 – How the NLPG/LLPG will join services and information together
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APPENDIX 1
LOCAL LAND AND PROPERTY GAZETTEER - Draft PROJECT PLAN
OBJECTIVE
The ultimate objective is to produce a Local Land and Property Gazetteer (LLPG) to BS7666 standard
that can be amalgamated with LLPG’s from other Local Authorities to form the National Land and
Property Gazetteer (NLPG). The LLPG to contain a single definitive address for all Land and
Property in the District. The LLPG should also contain links/cross references to addresses held in
other Council systems and applications. There should be a spatial reference for each entry. Eventually
all land in the District would be referenced in the LLPG.
ISSUES AND CONSIDERATIONS
There are several items which will be considered before, and during, the compilation of the LLPG. In
no particular order they are:
1.
The National Street Gazetteer (NSG) has been compiled by the highway authorities (in our
case Devon County Council). This gazetteer contains information regarding street names,
localities and towns – each road should be uniquely held and have a unique street reference
number. Any address held within the District Council’s LLPG must link to the NSG entry
and contain the NSG street reference number. It is therefore important that all street names,
localities and towns are correct in the NSG as the District Council want to see them.
2.
Gazetteer software – The Council already has IDeA accredited software from MVM. This is
currently used within Planner 20/20 to link addresses (OS Address Point) to planning
applications (the same gazetteer would be used by Land Charges 20/20 and Building Control
20/20 systems). The MVM gazetteer will be required for the 20/20 systems. It has not yet
been decided whether this will be the corporate gazetteer or whether ‘master data’ will be
held in another system and copied back into MVM.
3.
MVM 20/20 – The Planning system already links planning applications to a BS7666
gazetteer loaded with O.S. Address Point data. The creation of a new LLPG will in effect
“conflict” with the existing links. There appear to be two solutions – either to “un-link”
addresses and planning applications or link the new LLPG back to each application. The
second option is obviously preferable and may be possible if the Ordnance Survey Address
Point Reference will provide the link (an initial conversation with Jon Venn (MVM) suggests
that this may be possible).
4.
Address Matching – At some stage during the project address data from the Council’s
systems (Council Tax, Electoral Register, NNDR – other datasets at extra cost) will need to
be matched against each other, the NSG and the existing draft NLPG. There are several
companies able to offer this service. The IDeA have an agreement with Intelligent
Addressing to undertake address matching for a payment of £4,750. It is suggested that as the
IDeA have close links with Intelligent Addressing, and as the NLPG is maintained for the
Local Government Information House by Intelligent Addressing, that they undertake the
address matching process.
5.
NLPG Licence Agreement – As part of the process of developing the NLPG each authority
is expected to sign a licence agreement. To date this Authority has not because of concerns
regarding the ownership of data and the allocation of revenue that may come from the
commercial exploitation of the NLPG. Most of these concerns have now been resolved.
‘Signing up” to the agreement will add impetus and commitment to the project and will open
the door for obtaining, much needed, help and assistance from the IDeA and Intelligent
Addressing. Signing the agreement is a pre-requisite for obtaining a copy of the draft NLPG
which would be needed as part of the address matching process. In effect the LLPG cannot be
created unless the agreement is signed.
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6.
Project Team – A project team will need to be set up with the task of compiling the
gazetteer. Discussions with other Local Authorities show a wide variation of numbers and
time taken to complete the project. A reasonable number would appear to be about 3 or 4.
They would need good IT skills and, perhaps more importantly, good levels of local
knowledge - someone from IT will be required to look after the various technical issues. The
project team would be made up of existing staff. There may however be a requirement to
employ one or two temporary staff for short periods to either resolve address problems, or
provide cover for staff working on the compilation of the gazetteer.
GETTING STARTED
As with all projects of any magnitude this is difficult. The steps below suggest the probable route.
a)
Sign up to the NLPG – to demonstrate commitment and obtain get Draft NLPG data from
the Local Government Information House.
b)
Intelligent Addressing will be commissioned to undertake the address matching exercise.
c)
Set up a project team/timescales with an overall target of completing the task within a 9
month period. Until a certain amount of work has been undertaken it is difficult to estimate
timescale – up to 9 months would seem to be a reasonable target. There may however be
pressure from the IDeA to complete in a shorter time period.
d)
The project team would initially:
i)
Discuss a proposed methodology with Intelligent Addressing and the
IDeA and form a more detailed “plan of campaign”. Agree a
specification/standard for BS7666 fields (town, locality etc).
ii)
Speak to MVM, regarding setting up a separate gazetteer to hold/compile the LLPG
and discuss the methodology with them. (Ultimately the LLPG would be integrated
with the current MVM 20/20 gazetteer).
iii)
Clean address information held within the National Street Gazetteer (NSG) –
primarily the street, locality and town fields. This work has already been started in
advance of the rest of the project.
e)
Address Matching – Once the data has been “extracted” from the various data bases they
will be matched against each other, the NSG and the existing NLPG. (This work to be
undertaken by Intelligent Addressing).
f)
Cleaning up the data – once the data has been matched anomalies, mismatches etc will need
to be resolved. This is the time consuming bit, and will be labour intensive. Most of the
project time is likely to be spent on this task. (If the street gazetteer has been sorted before
the address matching is undertaken the task should be made somewhat easier). There may be
a need for additional temporary staffing to assist with this element of the project, or to provide
cover for staff involved in the project.
g)
Data Submission/loading – Once the “problem addresses” etc. have been resolved. The
clean, definitive dataset will be returned to Intelligent Addressing to become part of the final
NLPG. The Council would thereafter be responsible for the maintenance of the National
gazetteer as it applies to the District. This dataset also be transferred to the live 20/20
gazetteer software for linking to Planning/Land Charge/Building control items (this work
would be undertaken by MVM)
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FINAL COMMENT
Whilst no one should under estimate this task it has been undertaken successfully by other authorities.
The long term benefits should easily outweigh the problems associated with building the database.
The success of the project will to a large extent be dependent on being able to put together an
enthusiastic project team, and them receiving sufficient support and resources (including time) to
complete it. The LLPG will be an essential building block in the move to improve service delivery,
integrate systems and implement E Government.
Pete West
15 August 2002
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Appendix 2
NLPG within the context of other initiatives
Version 2.0 (NLPG Briefing Notes Pack Sheet 2)
Much of the commentary below relating to NLIS and the NLPG has been extracted from
the "prospectus – Local Authority electronic service delivery via the National Land
Information Service (NLIS) and Scottish Land Information Service (ScotLis)" produced
by the IDeA. For further details or copies of the prospectus contact IDeA via the
telephone, fax or email addresses given on the page of contacts
The National Land Information Service (NLIS)
NLIS and its Scottish equivalent ScotLis is an exciting initiative to provide improved
access to land and property related information.
The overall concept of NLIS/ScotLis is to promote electronic delivery of land and
property related information to a wide audience. However, the initial targets are the
delivery of integrated land and property information search facilities, which will support
the conveyancing process. ScotLis will also be piloting "shopping mall" type access to
certain statutory registers and associated information.
The overall project is managed by an executive board, chaired by the Chief Land
Registrar and comprising representatives from the Improvement and Development
Agency (representing local government), HM Land Registry (HMLR), Registers of
Scotland (RoS), Ordnance Survey (OS), Department of the Environment, Transport and
the Regions (DETR), Valuation Office Agency (VOA) and the Cabinet Office Central IT
Unit (CITU).
National Land and Property Gazetteer (NLPG)
The core of NLIS/ScotLis is the National Land and Property Gazetteer which is itself the
aggregation of Local Land and Property Gazetteers (LLPG). The NLPG will provide
unambiguous identification of land and property and hence provide access to the
information required for the conveyancing process.
National Land Use Database (NLUD)
The Department of Environment, Transport and the Regions (DETR), working in
partnership with English Partnerships, the IDeA and Ordnance Survey (OS), has
commenced work on a consistent assessment of Vacant and Derelict Sites and Other
Previously Developed Land throughout England that may be available for housing or
other development. This will form the first phase of the National Land Use Database
(NLUD) that will eventually cover all land uses in England and will be regularly updated.
Electoral Roll
The aim of the project is to improve the management of information and technology for
the Register of Electors and voting.
Local Custodians
Local Authorities are the definitive source of addresses (street naming and numbering
and development control) which are crucial to the effective creation and maintenance of
the LLPGs. In this role as Local Custodians of LLPGs, the Local Authorities are the key to
the creation and maintenance of the NLPG.
BS7666
To facilitate the creation of the NLPG a British Standard (BS7666) has been created. The
standard comprises four parts covering Street Gazetteers, Land and Property Gazetteers,
Addresses and Rights of Way. An operational BS7666 compliant LLPG is an essential
prerequisite for involvement in the NLPG.
It should be noted that the creation and maintenance of a BS7666 compliant street
gazetteer is already mandatory for all highway authorities.
Issues for Local Government
Detailed consideration of the role of local authorities in the creation and maintenance of
the NLPG and in particular the benefits to be gained and the investment and resources
required are detailed in the IDeA prospectus.
UK Standard Geographic Base (UKSGB)
The aim of the UKSGB initiative is to deliver a service, which will provide electronic
access to consistent spatial referencing across the UK. For example, some of the aims of
phase 1 of the project are to provide access to definitive administrative names and
codes, easy to use administrative area boundaries and definitive postal boundaries.
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Appendix 3
The IDeA Initiative
Version 2.0 (NLPG Briefing Notes Pack Sheet 4)
The background
IDeA’s subsidiary Local Government Information House Ltd (LGIH) entered a joint
venture agreement with Property Intelligence plc (PI). The joint venture means PI’s
Intelligent Addressing consultancy unit (IA) will create an embryo National Land and
Property Gazetteer from a number of national address datasets which will then be fine
tuned with the input from Local Authorities. To assist those Local Authorities who do not
yet have a BS7666 compliant Land and Property Gazetteer, Intelligent Addressing are
offering a creation service via the IDeA to all Local Authorities.
What is going to happen?
The embryo NLPG will be created from existing GB-wide datasets such as the Council Tax
Lists and Ordnance Survey Address-Point and Intelligent Addressing’s existing
commercial property Gazetteer which includes the Non-Domestic Rating Lists.
When this first stage is completed, the results will be matched by Intelligent Addressing
to address datasets held individually by each Local Authority. The proposal covers four
datasets, the Electoral Registers, Address-Point, Council Tax and Non Domestic Rating
Lists.
This second stage process will clean and synchronise the GB-wide dataset with those of
each Local Authority.
As the Local Authority’s datasets are matched in turn, they will be returned to each
Authority as a BS7666 compliant Gazetteer complete with an official Unique Property
Reference Number (UPRN). Part of the data returned will be a cross-reference table
linking the Gazetteer to each of the input datasets.
One of the elements of a BS7666 compliant land and property gazetteer is a link to the
National Street Gazetteer and as part of the creation process, Intelligent Addressing will
integrate local copies of the NSG.
In addition to the Gazetteer and Cross-Reference data, each Local Authority will be given
details of any inconsistencies within the data sets or the Gazetteer and between the Land
and Property Gazetteer and the Street Gazetteer.
What about those Local Authorities who already have BS7666 compliant
Gazetteers?
Although a formal structure for the NLPG maintenance hub is still under discussion,
Intelligent Addressing will create a fully functioning hub to allow all existing and newly
created LLPGs to be fully integrated into the NLPG. This hub will also allow the continual
movement and integration of all changes, additions and deletions from Local to National
Gazetteers.
Will there be anything left for a Local Authority to do?
Yes, Intelligent Addressing can help in the initial bulk processing of address based data
and can create a BS7666 LLPG for any Local Authority, but the Local Authority will have
to commit time and resources to checking, cleaning and maintenance, see Gazetteer
Creation
Why are Intelligent Addressing involved?
From their experience as part of the leading supplier of property information, the
Intelligent Addressing team long ago recognised the possible benefits in terms of data
quality, reduced administration and collection costs and, indeed, increased revenue that
a gazetteer could bring.
To this end IA have already created the only commercial property gazetteer with
national coverage for their own internal use. However, the full benefit to the wider
property industry and the country as a whole can only be achieved if a truly complete,
nationally accepted, constantly maintained and easily available NLPG is brought into
existence. Through the IDeA initiative this ambition will be realised.
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Appendix 4 & 5
Stage 2 - Creation of Local Land & Property
Gazetteers (LLPG)
Electoral Roll
Non-Domestic Rates
BS7666 Format
BS7666 Format
+
+
Council Tax
BS7666 Format
Address-Point
/own co-ordinates
BS7666 Format
Other datasets
BS7666 Format
Draft LLPG
+
+
Compared to Draft
NLPG version
All exceptions
resolved by LA
UPRN reference
to populate
Original files
Final LLPG
(replaces draft version nationally
Local maintenance commences)
Appendix 4 - How the NLPG/LLPG is produced (Source IDeA)
Appendix 5 - How the NLPG/LLPG will join information and services together (Source IDeA)
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