Kent Highways Wins Prestigious National Award

03 November 2008, 3:21pm

The UK’s Kent Highway Services Alliance (KHS), a partnership between Kent County Council, Jacobs, Ringway and TENET has received a prestigious national award for its innovative use of the National Street Gazetteer. The 2008 Exemplar Award for the National Street Gazetteer (NSG) ‘Most innovative use of Additional Street Data’, was awarded in recognition of the way in which KHS and its partners are successfully protecting Kent’s environmental, cultural and historical heritage. The annual Exemplar Awards for Local Government are presented by the Improvement and Development Agency (IDeA) and Intelligent Addressing.

Kent has many miles of verges rich in flora and fauna including several species of orchid and other wildlife such as dormice, butterflies and grass snakes. These roadside strips also include vestiges of Kent’s historical and archaeological heritage. To protect Kent’s roadside nature reserves and archaeological heritage from damage by street works activity, data maintained by Kent Wildlife Trust and by Kent Heritage Conservation has been entered into the NSG’s Additional Street Data (ASD).

A system has been designed to make it easy to collect, update and display ASD on a street works coordination website used by works promoters when pre-planning street works. Clicking on the intended works location on web maps enables promoters to discover both the unique street reference number (USRN) and details of any Environmentally Sensitive Areas (ESA), with instructions to telephone environmental experts directly as part of the work planning process. In addition there is a 'service level agreement' to ensure that ESA data is routinely and automatically supplied from definitive sources to the network managers for Kent Highway Services Alliance. An alert is produced if replacement data is not received by the expected date. As a result all roadside ESA sites, even if recently designated, are afforded protection from the potential danger of damage by street works activity.

John Hayes, Director at The Improvement and Development Agency, said as he presented the award “Kent Highway Services Alliance have found a simple way of using the NSG to protect its Environmentally Sensitive Areas and historical heritage from street works activity. Making information easily accessible encourages communication between the environmental groups and street work promoters. It is a fine example of using strategy, technology and data to link systems and organisations to deliver a joined up service which has engaged the interest and goodwill of all the people concerned.”

Photograph shows John Hayes, Director at The Improvement and Development Agency (left) presenting the Award to Stewart Anandappa, GIS Analyst, Kent Highways Services Alliance

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