A national database that was supposed to help end gazumping in the
property market is not being used by some of its target
customers.
The National Land and Property Gazetteer (NLPG), which was created
from local authority gazetteers, was intended to be the key
information source for the National Land Information Service (NLIS)
- an online one-stop shop for property conveyancing that enables
property searches to be conducted in minutes.
However, one of the three suppliers for the NLIS hub, TM Property
Service - formerly known as Teramedia - has admitted that it only
uses the NLPG database for about 40% of its property searches, and
often uses the Postal Address File as an alternative.
TM Property said it has been forced to use alternative data sources
for its services because only a limited number of local authorities
have created local address systems and connected to the NLPG.
So far only about 125 out of 452 local authorities in England and
Wales are connected to the NLPG.
Intelligent Addressing, the supplier which is overseeing the
creation of local gazetteers, said it had recently signed a
licensing agreement with TM Property.