- GeoPlace, the centre of excellence for the management of spatial address information and street data for Great Britain, has today announced the winners of the 2012 Exemplar Awards. The Awards celebrated excellence in service delivery that had been enabled through local government address and street information. They recognised the vital role address and street information professionals play in local service delivery, celebrating their achievements and providing external acknowledgement of innovation, creativity, best practice, hard work and achievement.

The Award Ceremony took place as part of the 'Everything Happens Somewhere' conference, which was held on 25th October 2012 in Central London. Both the Exemplar Awards and the conference itself were aimed at supporting local government address and street information specialists, together with street naming and numbering officials.

The main category winners of the 2012 Exemplar Awards are: Citizen Award: Caerphilly County Borough Council. On behalf of the Aber Valley Heritage Group and the wider community, Caerphilly County Borough Council mapped the addresses of all 440 victims of the 1913 Senghenydd Collier Explosion to help in telling the story of the UK’s worst ever mining disaster. Improvement and Efficiency Award: Kent County Council. With the aim of improving public safety, whilst at the same time reducing costs, Kent County Council developed a system to lessen the occurrence of potholes and footway defects, and find and swiftly fix those which do occur with fewer Road Safety Inspectors and lower compensation claims. Integration Award: London Borough of Harrow. Focusing on the delivery of ‘more for less’, the London Borough of Harrow created an in-house solution providing a platform for all staff to access address information corporately at a fraction of what they had previously paid to a private company. Services Award: Bath and North East Somerset Council. After commissioning 360-degree street level photography for integration into its web based GIS, Bath and North East Somerset Council dynamically linked the data to their local address dataset in order to make that data fully searchable and maximise the return on investment, leading to savings right across the council. Best Example of Street Naming and Numbering Policy Implementation Award: Adur and Worthing Councils. In order to streamline services, reduce lengthy paperwork processes and create additional revenue, Adur and Worthing Councils amalgamated the Street Naming and Numbering Services employed across the two councils via a shared service.

GeoPlace is a public sector limited liability partnership between the Local Government Association and Ordnance Survey. GeoPlace’s role is to create and maintain the National Address Gazetteer and the National Street Gazetteer for England and Wales, providing definitive sources of publicly-owned spatial address and street data for Great Britain. Through agreement with Scotland’s Improvement Service Company, coverage has been extended to include Scotland’. For more information, visit www.geoplace.co.uk. CONTACTS: GeoPlace contact: Gayle Gander Head of Marketing +44(0) 20 7630 4600 gayle.gander@geoplace.co.uk www.geoplace.co.uk Notes to editors: GeoPlace GeoPlace is a public sector limited liability partnership between the Local Government Association and Ordnance Survey. GeoPlace’s role is to create and maintain the National Address Gazetteer and the National Street Gazetteer for England and Wales, providing definitive sources of publicly-owned spatial address and street data for Great Britain. Through agreement with Scotland’s Improvement Service Company, coverage has been extended to include Scotland’.