Adult Social Care Glossary, v 0.6

The Unique Property Reference Number – the unique identifier for every addressable location – is key to almost everything that’s delivered or achieved by councils.

Everything that local government does happens somewhere, be it housing a homeless person, collecting someone's bin or providing support to a family in difficulty. Precise location information is essential for councils to deliver services to the residents they serve.

The Unique Property Reference Number (UPRN) should be fundamental to all data matching and, therefore, to all data analysis. This would ensure that disparate data sets and innovative applications of data can be blended to provide insight and understanding about residents and businesses, which is needed to deliver area-based services effectively on the ground. Every authority has common focal points, such as housing, education, welfare and highways. When the UPRN is added to each siloed department’s data, the whole organisation benefits. It becomes a much simpler exercise to link inter-departmental information.