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UPRN: Find my local address and street custodian


Address and street custodians create and maintain local address and street data and ensure consistency between the records for their area. There are many benefits to making contact with your local custodian.

The ‘find my custodian’ service enables you to identify quickly who your custodian is, to support with enhancements of your case management systems, which is a precursor to making better use of data and improving service delivery in your local area.

One of the ways of gaining insight from your data is to link it with other data you hold. This can be challenging as people write in addresses in lots of different ways; the best way to do this is to have a unique identifier on every system, like Unique Property Reference Numbers (UPRNs), which allows accurate matching (and, increasingly, is also being used by central government).  

It is recommended you begin simply, such as starting with two systems (like council tax and social care). We then encourage you to speak with your address custodian for help. Custodians oversee the creation and maintenance of the addresses and help identify the UPRNs of your existing caseload. You can find out more information about the role of a local custodian here. Looking ahead, they can also guide you on how to add a UPRN look-up to your system for new cases. The UPRN look-up, called OS Places, is free to councils at the point of use. 

This ‘find my custodian’ service is open to anyone from an English or Welsh council using their council email address. Enter your contact details and submit your request to receive an email with information about who your custodian is.