The British Standard that enables UK land and property records and street records to be consistently recorded has just been updated. This blog post explains the standard’s role and details what’s changed in the 2021 revision. 

It all stems from the fact that every local authority in the UK has a statutory responsibility to keep a detailed record of all the streets, footpaths, land, and property in its area. The details are recorded locally and go forward to be compiled into the National Street Gazetteer (NSG) and the National Land and Property Gazetteer (NLPG).

These important tomes provide local authorities, contractors, and utilities with a single, authoritative source of data that’s hugely useful when it comes to managing street works and transport; accessing businesses; and managing community and blue-light services.

For utilities in particular the national gazetteers are an essential point of reference, especially in urban areas, because they help ensure that broadband, gas, water, and electricity services and the road network itself are maintained efficiently.  

The BS 7666 series of British Standards has therefore been produced since the 1990s with the simple aim of enabling records to be compiled consistently. It’s for use by those who create and maintain the local authority street, land, and property records that go to make up the national gazetteers. The standards are written by, among others, the British Cartographic Society, the British Geological Survey, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, the Land Registry, and the Ministry of Defence.

The essential components of a gazetteer

The BS 7666 series was originally published between 1994 and 1996 in four parts. A new Part 0 was subsequently added in 2006. Because the new Part 0 subsumed the content of Part 3, and the revised Part 1 subsumed the content in Part 4, BS 7666 still consists of four standards, but they’re numbered 0, 1, 2, and 5.

Part 0 has just been revised as BS 7666-0:2021 Spatial datasets for geographical referencing Part 0: General model for gazetteers and spatial referencing. It defines the essential components of a gazetteer of geographic locations and provides a general model of spatial references based on named spatial units in the United Kingdom. It also defines the attributes of each geographic location to be recorded in a gazetteer, and the metadata associated with the gazetteer.

This in turn is based on the international standard BS EN ISO 19112 Geographic Information – Spatial referencing by geographic identifiers, and builds on this to define spatial references and general gazetteers of geographic objects in the UK.

BS 7666-0 can be used for defining gazetteers of locations and systems of spatial references based on named spatial units, but doesn’t specify any particular ones, nor does it define a database schema. It provides the basis for the other parts of BS 7666 by defining general structures to enable gazetteers of a range of classes of geographic locations to be created in a consistent way. Parts 1, 2, and 5 then supply specifications for a street gazetteer; a land and property gazetteer; and a delivery point gazetteer respectively.

Changes to the standard

As to what’s new about BS 7666-0 in 2021, the standard had to be revised to keep pace with changes to other documents. Specifically, revisions to the standard update the UML model so that it follows current conventions. We’ve also updated the standard so that it harmonizes with the revised Parts 1 and 2, and with the revised BS EN ISO 19112. In addition, some external references have been updated and some other minor editorial changes have been made so that the standard can continue to be relevant in a changing world.

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