IT professionals have warned that a database supposed to help end
gazumping in the property market could be riddled with
errors.
The National Land and Property Gazetteer (NLPG) database will
underpin the National Land Information Service (NLIS) - an online
one-stop shop for property conveyancing, allowing land and property
searches.
However, sources close to the NLPG project have raised concerns
over the quality of address data which is being fed in to the
national address database. One supplier, who worked with local
authorities and the three suppliers responsible for the NLIS hub,
said up to 20% of data in the NLPG could be inaccurate.
Leaders of the NLIS project, which was launched last year, claim
that it would allow land and property searches, in minutes rather
than days or weeks under the current, paper-based system.
A joint initiative between central and local government, NLIS was
the lead service of an Information Age Concordat, outlined in a
statement signed by key central and local government figures
including the lord chancellor.
A growing number of other key government projects, including the
electoral register, will use the NLPG and the police and utility
companies are also understood to be considering using the address
masterfile.
Each property in the NLPG is supposed to have a unique property
reference number. Local authorities must first create their own
local gazetteer by merging different address data sets - including
the electoral register and council tax records.
Anomalies are supposed to be eliminated by the council. The local
gazetteer is linked to the NLPG, by Intelligent Addressing, the
supplier which is overseeing the creation of local
gazetteers.
But another supplier told Computer Weekly that one of the main
problems occurred when properties were duplicated in the national
list - each with a unique property reference number - and listed in
different localities.
This could result in a property surveyor acting for a customer
missing a planning application affecting the property because the
house appears in the wrong area. It could also waste time for
solicitors and property professionals using the pay-as-you-go NLIS
search facility.
One IT professional responsible for creating an NLPG-linked local
gazetteer, echoed these concerns and claimed that up to a quarter
of its address data was probably not accurate.
Council documents, seen by Computer Weekly, show that more than
10%, some 41,000 council records, listed streets that were not
present in the national street gazetteer, which is maintained by
Ordnance Survey.
Intelligent Addressing said it achieved a 97% match rate when it
compared the entire NLPG to land registry records, which are based
on the Postal Address File.
The company declined to show the results of the survey. Its chief
executive Michael Nicholson said councils may be left with
unmatched address data after the creation of the local gazetteer,
but the data in the NLPG was still overwhelmingly accurate. He also
said a small number of duplicated address data within the NLPG was
inevitable, but this would only be in the hundreds of thousands.