Plans for Britain's National Spatial Address Infrastructure

Plans for a new national, high-quality spatial address infrastructure building are announced by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM), Ordnance Survey and the Improvement and Development Agency (IDeA) for local government.
The aim is to provide a single national database that will be maintained through a partnership approach and a collaborative framework of address and property identifiers. This will be developed and operated by Ordnance Survey in partnership with local and central government. It will build on the work already undertaken by the National Land and Property Gazetteer (NLPG), Royal Mail and Ordnance Survey. A joint prospectus issued today and available on ODPM's website describes the proposal in more detail and seeks comments from interested parties.

The database, currently to be known as the National Spatial Address Infrastructure (NSAI), will support a wide range of services delivered by central and local government and the private sector. In government, for example, the NSAI will improve the address base for the processing of benefits claims, the management and collection of local taxation, the next population census, as well as supporting the delivery of services such as police, fire and social care. For local authorities it will also complement arrangements under the new Mapping Services Agreement (MSA), released today.

The infrastructure will build on Local Land and Property Gazetteers (LLPGs), the NLPG, the National Street Gazetteer, the Postcode Address File (PAF) and Ordnance Survey ADDRESS-POINT. NSAI will draw on the expertise of stakeholders, including local authorities, Royal Mail Group plc, Office for National Statistics and Valuation Office Agency.

The main partners, Ordnance Survey and IDeA, have agreed heads of terms for the development process. A first cut of the NSAI will become available 8 months after the full agreement is signed, paving the way towards a final structure after 18 months. The NSAI will initially relate to England and Wales. Longer term, the plan is to include information from Scotland and Northern Ireland to create a UK-wide infrastructure. The prospectus issued invites comments by the end of June.

Stakeholders will have a continuing input to the process via a governance process that will encourage participation at a number of different levels. This group will be chaired by a senior official at ODPM.