Gazetteer specialists Aligned Assets can today announce Herefordshire Council as the latest customer of its Symphony Suite of Gazetteer Solutions.

Home of the famous Hereford Mappa Mundi – the world’s largest medieval map, Herefordshire boosts a population of 178,000 covering 13,000 square kilometres and is one of the most rural and least densely populated counties in England. 

As a Unitary Authority the council has responsibility for the management of both Local Land and Property Gazetteer (LLPG) and Local Street Gazetteer (LSG) data with a total of 108,000 records requiring maintenance.

To facilitate this, the council have replaced their old, inefficient gazetteer management system with Symphony iManage from Aligned Assets.  This technologically advanced, yet user-friendly system provides them with all the tools they require to create, maintain and analyse their BS7666 compliant Street and Land & Property Gazetteer.

They will also be using Symphony iManage for the management of Associated Street Data (ASD) that will allow them to maintain information on the ownership of the streets, height and weight restrictions, streets with special surfaces and traffic sensitive streets.  Importantly, the Aligned Assets ASD module will enable the council to be fully compliant with the Traffic Management Act EToN 5 Technical Specifications and avoid any fines that come with non-compliance.

Street Naming and Numbering (SNN) plays an important role in Herefordshire Council’s Building Control Department and requires close consultation with the Parish Councils.  In order to achieve significant efficiency savings in this fee-generated process, the council have chosen to use Aligned Assets’ SNN module.  Fully customisable to the user’s requirements, this flexible tool will allow them to manage the complete SNN lifecycle, including the automatic distribution of letters or emails, saving considerable amounts of time and so increasing productivity.

The final piece to the gazetteer jigsaw is the installation of one of Aligned Assets’ most recent developments call the Xtended Data Module, which allows the user to add additional user-defined fields to their BS7666 gazetteer. 

In the case of Herefordshire Council, they had a need to hold addresses in a way that was both suitable for internal and external uses.  The use of BS7666 addresses was ideal for the internal workings of the council, but as explained by Herefordshire Council’s GIS Team Leader, Duncan Trumper, “The BS7666 address is not suitable for public interaction in all cases.  We had a need for postal addresses as well since they enable better efficiency with the data exchange from the public especially in the Social Care and CRM systems.”

To achieve this they added six additional fields to their LLPG using the Xtended Data Module, which held these postal addresses, enabling them to have ‘the best of both worlds’ – fully standardised BS7666 data, plus an easy-to-use postal address, all linked with a Unique Property Reference Number (UPRN).  By doing this they achieve not only the internal efficiencies that come from standardisation, but better data exchange with the public and so reducing unnecessary contact.

Speaking of their switch to the Aligned Assets system, Duncan went on to say, “We are very impressed with the level of service we have had from Aligned Assets and it makes me happy to know that I made the right decision, which was a big one to make!  I look forward to a happy working relationship with Aligned Assets long into the future.”