Birmingham City Council is providing the last piece in
the
UK'snational property ID scheme jigsaw.
The National Land and Property Gazetteer (NLPG)
is a national address database that accurately pinpoints every
property type, including land and buildings, without postal
addresses.
The scheme is now a reality after Birmingham City Council became
the last local authority to sign up to a process initiated in
1999.
Since that time, the UK government's Improvement and Development
Agency, the firm Intelligent Addressing, and local government
address managers have been working in partnership to produce a
definitive index of all land parcels and buildings, including those
in multiple occupation, with a nationally Unique Property Reference
Number (UPRN).
The dataset supports various local authority departments
including revenue collection, environmental health, social
security, the electoral roll and education.
Fraud prevention, tax collection and disaster planning all
benefit from the fact that each property is given a unique
reference that transcends numbers, names, descriptions and
postcodes. UPRNs are assigned for the full life of the plot or
building.
With Birmingham now on board, all councils with a statutory
responsibility for street naming and numbering are now submitting
updates to the NLPG central hub.
With more than 29 million unique addresses, the NLPG is now
billed as the de facto addressing standard for England and Wales,
with linkage to the National Gazetteer for Scotland.