To the Rt Hon Robert Jenrick MP, Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government.
CC : Thalia Baldwin, Director of the Geospatial Commission
We welcome the recent announcements and actions by the UK Government regarding the use and availability of a Unique Property Reference Number (UPRN). We believe there are many benefits that might come from the wide adoption of a single reference number for residential properties such as:
- Improve building, consumer and market safety
- More targeted and cost-effective enforcement of legislation
- Increase protection for tenants and a reduction of rogue landlords
- Speed up and make more certain the home buying and selling process
- Reduce waste, save time and empower the consumer
- Increase income for the Treasury
In short, we believe that the wide market adoption of the UPRN delivers many major benefits to UK society, the residential sector and to Government and if implemented effectively may help position the UK as the world’s leading market.
We believe that there are certain conditions that need to be met for this to be the case:
- It should be mandatory for all public sector data sets, relating to properties and buildings, to include the UPRN and there should be a clear roadmap to get to this point
- All future Government tenders and policy relating to residential properties, or data about it should mandate the use of the UPRN
- A clear agreement about the ethical use of data in the housing market
- The UPRN must be in a clear and useable format that allows the UPRN to be widely identified, used and shared at no cost on an individual or market level basis
- As far as is possible, this must include the tools, the support materials and the explanation needed by the whole sector for adoption, not just the solution providers
- Not only should the UPRN be available, but also a limited number of attributed reference numbers and geospatial identifiers
We believe that the wide market adoption of the UPRN would be a significant step forward with numerous benefits to the UK residential market, society and the economy. If all the conditions above were to be met, we would proactively work towards the adoption of the UPRN across the whole market.
Full list of signatories in alphabetical order:
- Advice for Renters
- Alpha Property Insight
- Association of Residential Managing Agents (ARMA)
- Base Property Specialists
- Bold Legal Group
- British Property Federation
- Building Passport
- Chestertons
- ClientMoneyProtect
- Conveyancing Association
- Countrywide
- Fexco Property Services
- FirstPort
- Fixflo
- Foxtons
- HACT
- Hamilton Fraser insurance products
- Hamptons
- HML Group
- Hunters
- Institute of Residential Property Management (IRPM)
- JLL
- JMW Solicitors LLP
- Kinleigh Limited (KFH)
- Knight Frank LLP
- Landlord Action
- Landmark Information
- Landscape Institute
- Marks out of Tenancy
- My Property Group
- MyDeposits
- NAPIT
- No Letting Go
- Northern Housing Consortium
- National Residential Landlords Association (NRLA)
- OSCRE International
- Premier Estates
- Property Checklists
- Propertymark
- Property Redress Scheme (PRS)
- Real Estate Data Foundation (RED Foundation)
- Rendall and Rittner
- Residential Logbook Association (RLBA)
- Residently
- Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS)
- Savills (UK) Ltd
- The Depositary
- The Property Ombudsman (TPO)
- The Tenancy Deposit Scheme (TDS)
- The Lettings Industry Council (TLIC)
- Trustmark
- UK PropTech Association (UK PA)
- The UK Apartment Association (UKAA)
