Consultation on access to address register data for social science research

Do you use address register data in your research?  If you do then you might be interested to know that ESRC are currently running a public consultation to gather the opinions of researchers around the UK.

There have recently been substantial changes to the creation and management of address data in the UK with the amalgamation of the National Land and Property Gazetteer and Ordnance Survey Mastermap Address Layer 2 into a National Address Gazetteer managed by GeoPlace.

GeoPlace is a public sector partnership between the Local Government Association and Ordnance Survey. The project brought together address data from local government and Royal Mail and Ordnance Survey. The Ordnance Survey data includes high resolution grid references for each address which permit mapping and detailed spatial analysis.

The establishment of the National Address Gazetteer marks an extremely important development in the UK data infrastructure. However, it also presents new challenges for the academic research community in terms of access to national address products.

It is therefore important for ESRC to assess the implications of these changes in address data arrangements, due to the potential costs and impacts for the social science research community.

This is important, the consultation document will be used to shape the way we access the data in the future.  It is your chance to express your opinion.  The deadline for filling in the consultation document is the 3rd August. To access the survey, click the link below.

Online Survey