Nottingham City Council has received a prestigious national award for the way it uses and shares information to assess flood risk and plan regeneration.

The 2008 Exemplar Award for the ‘Best Use of the National Land and Property Gazetteer (NLPG) data by a partner,’ recognises the way the Council is using its property data to help planning decisions to be made about flood risk and regeneration around an area that was once heavily used by water-intensive and highly polluting industries. The annual Exemplar Awards for Local Government are presented by the Improvement and Development Agency (IDeA) and Intelligent Addressing.

The River Leen and its tributary Day Brook were central to the industrial expansion of the City of Nottingham and many businesses historically were established along its length to take advantage of the river’s water supply. Today many of these industries have closed, leaving behind disused land often contaminated by a history of bleaching, dyeing and other chemical processes. A project was set up between Nottingham City Council, the Environment Agency and Nottingham Regeneration Limited to address the challenges of regenerating such areas.

The River Leen and Day Brook Strategic Flood Risk Assessment (SFRA) project aims to steer development away from areas of highest risk and investigate solutions to flood risk.

The project received the award for its innovative use of property data held in the Council’s NLPG and other systems, such as whether the property was commercial or residential, whether the property was council owned or not and whether large employers were in the area. The data also revealed vulnerable commercial properties such as hospitals, health centres, and critical buildings such as electricity sub stations. Other vulnerable residential properties were identified, including those occupied by citizens claiming benefit with children under ten or those over the age 60. This means that decisions affecting the assessment, risk mitigation and possible future regeneration of an area are based on the most up to date and accurate and detailed property information.

Councillor Alan Clark, the City Council's portfolio holder for neighbourhood regeneration, said:

"This is an excellent example of Nottingham City Council working in partnership with the Environment Agency and Nottingham Regeneration Limited in order to ensure a sustainable approach to the future of new and existing communities."

John Hayes, Director at the Improvement and Development Agency, said:

"This is a great example of NLPG data being used to unlock information from other back office systems and then making it available to inform real decision making. The accuracy and level of information detail gathered via the NLPG for properties within the flood areas is impressive and its value to the Environment Agency, planners, Local Development Framework officers, heads of resilience, area committees emergency services and emergency planning officers cannot be underestimated."