Neath Port Talbot Council has been presented with Gold Performance Awards for the way it manages its address and street information database.

The Exemplar Awards 2018 were presented at the GeoPlace annual conference at the City of London earlier this month. The annual awards highlight excellence and best practice in UK councils’ use of land, property and street information.

Without accurate, current and well-maintained data on streets and addresses, emergency vehicles would find it difficult to get to our doors and we’d find it more difficult to access products and services.

Addresses are invaluable to our economy and our public services. Local councils have a statutory requirement for street naming and numbering and are the source for the millions of address records of every residence and business in the UK.

This is why Gold Achievement and Performance awards are so important – they are a testament to the hard work and skill that goes into maintaining a constantly changing dataset.

During 2018 and 2019, Neath Port Talbot Council’s hard working data team were also preparing for the 2021 census.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS), which runs the census, has estimated that its total value for local authorities over the next 10 years will be around £1.8bn, largely in determining the level of support to come from central government.

The census information feeds into resources such as the area classifications and the Index of Multiple Deprivation to identify future demand for services and support the provision of schools, healthcare facilities and other social infrastructure.

Councillor Ted Latham, Neath Port Talbot Council’s Cabinet Member for Streetscene and Engineering said: “Congratulations to the team responsible for managing this very important data which plays an important role in ensuring, among other things, that our parcels and mail get to us and that emergency vehicles know where to go. In short this work helps ensure our lives run as smoothly as possible.”

The award winning Neath Port Talbot team includes Gavin Sterio (Authority Address Custodian), Daniel Kirkwood (Network Management), Michael Thomas (Network Management), Ross Williams (Street Naming and Numbering) and Andrew Miller (IT).