About the NLPG

The National Land & Property Gazetteer (NLPG) database is the definitive address database for England and Wales. It is designed to deliver a consistent and definitive address. The NLPG contains more than 32 million residential, commercial and non-mailing addresses.

Local authorities create a Local Land & Property Gazetteer of all the addressable objects within their area. The LLPG from each of the 374 local authorities in England and Wales is fed to a central database, known as the “Hub”, where it becomes the National Land & Property Gazetteer NLPG). This data is then shared by organizations such as the emergency services, health authorities and the public sector.

All local authorities create their LLPGs using common data entry conventions, based upon the national standard BS7666:20. BS7666 specifies a standard format for holding details on every property and street.

Because local authorities are responsible for street naming and numbering (later passing that information to Royal Mail for inclusion in PAF®), they own and manage the most dynamic address dataset available.

Each local authority in England and Wales is required to build, maintain and update its own Local Land and Property Gazetteer (LLPG) – a list of every address and also other features including post boxes, community halls and churches – within their area of authority. The address elements of this data are subsequently fed to Royal Mail where they become part of the Postcode Address File (PAF®).

In addition the Mapping Service Agreement obliges councils to create, maintain and update an LLPG which means that the data is continually updated. The rules for updating the information are very strict, ensuring that the data is accurate, up-to-date and captured to a consistent format.

For example the LLPG Custodian – the person within each local authority who has overall responsibility for the authority’s LLPG, is obliged to feed changes to their LLPG within 10 days of the change occurring e.g. if a property is demolished.

Every local authority is required to use the same data quality standards and methods of formatting data when creating and maintaining their own Local Land & property Gazetteer and, as everyone applies this in the creation and maintenance of their respective gazetteers, the quality and interoperability is assured. The data is compliant with BS7666: 2006.