A Local Land and Property Gazetteer (LLPG) is an

address An address is a collection of information, presented in a mostly fixed format, used to give the location of a building, apartment, or other structure or a plot of land, generally using political boundaries and street names as references, along ...

database maintained by

local authorities Local government is a generic term for the lowest tiers of public administration within a particular sovereign state. This particular usage of the word government refers specifically to a level of administration that is both geographically-loca ...

, who are responsible for creating all addresses. However, until recently those same local authorities have not held a unified and consistent list of addresses within their areas. This has led to various services within individual local authorities maintaining separate and incompatible address databases.

Database

In recent years{{when, date=February 2022 the central government of the UK has required local authorities to modernise their processes to take advantage of new technologies and provide better linked up services to their residents and businesses. One of the key ways to achieve this goal has been to develop one address resource for their entire local authority area. This has ultimately meant that a resident may notify a council of their change of address at one place without having to repeat the process throughout a number of service areas within an authority. As part of this process the

National Land and Property Gazetteer The National Land and Property Gazetteer (NLPG) is an initiative in England and Wales to provide a definitive and consistent address infrastructure. Up until recently Great Britain has not held a single list of all addresses in the country, meaning ...

(NLPG) was created. This is a central repository or “hub” for all LLPGs and coordinates the many LLPGs created by local authorities. It also enforces the compliance of all LLPGs with the national standard for the representation of address information,

British Standard British Standards (BS) are the standards produced by the BSI Group which is incorporated under a royal charter and which is formally designated as the national standards body (NSB) for the UK. The BSI Group produces British Standards under the a ...

7666 ( BS7666). Largely through pressure from the central UK government for a consistent address resource the NLPG has become UK’s definitive address infrastructure. However, the development of the NLPG has been held back by arguments between local authorities and the national mapping agency,

Ordnance Survey Ordnance Survey (OS) is the national mapping agency for Great Britain. The agency's name indicates its original military purpose (see ordnance and surveying), which was to map Scotland in the wake of the Jacobite rising of 1745. There was a ...

, who are required to act as a trading entity. This has led to the NLPG being unable to compel local authorities to maintain their LLPGs as well as protracted negotiations regarding issues of ownership of address data. In May 2005 local authorities in the UK signed an agreement ( Mapping Services Agreement) with suppliers of

geographic data Geographic data and information is defined in the ISO/TC 211 series of standards as data and information having an implicit or explicit association with a location relative to Earth (a geographic location or geographic position). It is also call ...

, which included Ordnance Survey and the managers of the NLPG. This solved the issues surrounding ownership of address data and contained many restrictions on the use of LLPGs by local authorities as well as compulsions upon local authorities to maintain their LLPGs. However, simultaneously, Ordnance Survey published a proposal to develop an alternative address infrastructure called the National Spatial Address Infrastructure (NSAI). This involved Ordnance Survey taking ownership of the NLPG and then selling it back to the same local authorities that had created the LLPGs that make up the NLPG. This provoked another round of arguments between Ordnance Survey and local authorities. The NSAI has now been abandoned by Ordnance Surv

On 3 December 2010, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government announced the formation of GeoPlace to provide a freely-available national address gazetteer. This is a joint venture between the Local Government Association and Ordnance Survey. The venture underwent a process of approval by the Office of Fair Trading, which passed a judgement allowing the venture on 15 February 2011. Following the setting up of GeoPlace, NLPG data has been brought together with Ordnance Survey, Valuation Office Agency and Royal Mail data into the National Address Gazetteer infrastructure. The National Address Gazetteer infrastructure is the single source from which the AddressBase products from Ordnance Survey are developed. Through agreement between Ordnance Survey and Scotland’s Improvement Service, working on behalf of Scottish Local Government, the National Address Gazetteer includes DT

External links

National Land and Property Gazetteer
(NLPG) *

Centre for Economics and Business Research The Centre for Economics and Business Research (Cebr) is an economic consultancy based in London, United Kingdom. Cebr supplies economic forecasting and analysis to private firms and public bodies. It provides a range of economic services, ...

Evaluating the benefits of the LLPG and NLPGCEBR
Final Report)
Delivering better services to citizens
(I&DeA/NLPG Booklet)

(NSG)
Improvement and Development Agency
(I&DeA)
Valuebill
– an example of the implementation of LLPGs nationwide for the Valuation Office Agency (VOA)

– "ownership" of postal addresses highlighted (The Guardian 24 May 2007)
Satirical comment
– the LLPG reflected in the media (Transcript from BBC Radio 4 Today Programme) Gazetteers Geographic information systems Geographical databases in the United Kingdom