WEST Devon Borough Council has been presented with an award for ‘Best in South West Region’ together with a ‘Gold Performance Award’ in recognition of the management of its address information database. Also, South Hams District Council has received a ‘Gold Achievement Award’.

The award was presented at the GeoPlace annual conference and presentation of the Exemplar Awards 2016. The Exemplar Awards celebrated excellence in service delivery that have been enabled through local government address and street information.

Speaking at the conference, the Rt Hon Matt Hancock MP, Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General said ‘Addresses are invaluable to our economy and our public services. Addresses help make sure that emergency services get to our door as quickly as possible; addresses help confirm our identity; they help us to access products and services. It is true that everything happens somewhere and as a result, high quality address data is fundamental.’

The Minister continued: ‘I want to pay tribute to the work local authorities do in creating accurate addresses across Britain through the role of the Local Land and Property Gazetteer Custodian, which is invaluable to the process of querying and matching addresses — driving up accuracy and improving the frequency of updates.’

The Best in Region Award is given to the authority in the South West region which has attained the highest standard in national tests on data excellence and supply regular updates to the national hub which manages receipt of address data from all authorities in England and Wales.

In presenting the Awards to Sarah Hunt – West Devon and South Hams’ Local Land and Property Gazetteer Custodian, Kerry Pearce, National Address Data Manager, said: ‘Sarah has achieved the highest standard of address information data management in the South West region. Achieving this level demonstrates excellence and commitment to a process that brings local and national benefits.’