GeoPlace
GeoPlace is an organisation (LLP) that oversees the production and maintenance of the national address and street gazetteers, which are created and maintained with input from all local authorities in England and Wales. GeoPlace is a public sector limited liability partnership between the Local Government Association (LGA) and Ordnance Survey.
The National Land and Property Gazetteer (NLPG), the National Street Gazetteer (NSG) and the National Address Gazetteer are overseen by GeoPlace. The National Land and Property Gazetteer has been synchronised with address data from Ordnance Survey - Address Layer 2 (AL2). AL2 also incorporates Royal Mail PAF data. The combination of datasets from Local Government and Ordnance Survey is designed to create one definitive national address gazetteer. Through agreement with Scotland's Improvement Service Company, coverage has been extended to include Scotland.
History
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, which involved the acquisition of Intelligent Addressing. The venture underwent a process of approval by the Office of Fair Trading, which passed a judgement allowing the venture on 15 February 2011. The full text of the OFT decision was published on 23 February 2011.