Oxfordshire Fire & Rescue lifts service with accurate addressing

Oxfordshire Fire & Rescue Service, part of Oxfordshire County Council in the UK, has built and deployed a new property based Job Management System, which is underpinned by the NLPG (National Land and Property Gazetteer).

Apart from attending fires and accidents, the Oxfordshire Fire and Rescue Service carries out domestic and commercial property inspections covering everything from the installation of smoke alarms to the issuing of licences. They also undertake risk assessments and ensure building regulations are carried out. To help them do this work they are using a new property management system, which uses the National Land and Property Gazetteer (NLPG) – a national property ID scheme. Because of its NLPG foundations all searches and job referencing can now be carried out by property. The system is already delivering considerable benefits in terms of data access and accuracy.

In 2007 the NLPG was chosen to underpin the new FiReControl project, a major government initiative that is working to move from the existing 46 Fire & Rescue control room infrastructure to 9 new amalgamated Regional Control Centres (RCC). It was this decision that has spurred a number of Fire & Rescue services including Oxfordshire to embrace the NLPG concept and link up with address gazetteers maintained by local authorities.

The next phase of the Oxfordshire project will be to create a dynamic link between the NLPG and the job management system. In the interim the Fire Service is working closely with local gazetteer custodians to ensure that every property is covered. In their day-to-day work Fire Officers come across properties, which may not be in the database, or might have a variation of the address from the same property. These are reported to the Data and Systems Manager within Oxfordshire Fire and Rescue Service, who then contacts the relevant District Council gazetteer custodian to investigate.

“The NLPG is becoming our de facto source of property information,” said Jennie Crapper, Oxfordshire Fire & Rescue Service’s Data and Systems Manager. “In addition to our core Job Management System the NLPG is being referenced for our Fire Safety Audit forms. Our CAD system and hydrant database will be the next systems to be linked. In another area of activity we have been using the Fire Service Emergency Cover (FSEC) Toolkit to assist us in developing our Integrated Risk Management Plan (IRMP). In its next iteration FSEC will be called the ‘Risk Management Toolkit’ and become an extension of FiReControl referencing the NLPG for its property information. As a result of becoming familiar with the NLPG and collaborating closely with those responsible for addressing within Oxfordshire, we are in an ideal position to benefit from what is clearly the best source of property information available,” continued Jennie Crapper.

“Now that the Emergency Services are embracing the NLPG with such vigour there is no way back said Michael Nicholson, Managing Director of Intelligent Addressing. “The future of the NLPG is assured, the possibilities are endless and every citizen will benefit from this new era of data and information sharing.”

Gayle Gander,
Head of Marketing, Intelligent Addressing
T: +44 (0)207 747 3500,
www.intelligent-addressing.co.uk
www.nlpg.org.uk