A coalition of organisations from across the UK property sector has called on the government to take decisive action to adopt and implement the Unique Property Reference Number across the residential property market.
The UPRN is a unique identifier assigned to every address in the UK, providing an authoritative code that can be used help match records and create better and cleaner address data.
Almost 100 industry bodies and businesses, including the British Property Federation, the RICS, the Chartered Institute of Housing, Knight Frank, JLL and CBRE, have written to chancellor Rachel Reeves, housing secretary and deputy prime minister Angela Rayner and housing minister Matthew Pennycook asking them to put the UPRN at the heart of the property market.
Doing so, they say, will have minimal cost but significant impact on transparency, efficiency and speed in the market. The signatories believe that mass adoption of the UPRN will increase income for the Treasury from increased transactions and market activity, improve building, consumer and market safety, increase protection for tenants and reduce the number of rogue landlords, create more targeted and cost-effective enforcement of legislation and speed up and make more certain the home buying and selling process.
Theresa Wallace, chair of the Lettings Industry Council, said: “The UPRN is a vital piece of infrastructure that can drive significant improvements in the property market. We believe that its mass adoption will transform the letting industry, helping government, businesses and the consumer, and we call on the government to take immediate steps to help with the adoption of the UPRN.”
Dan Hughes, founder of the Real Estate Data Foundation, added: “In real estate, both the public and private sectors have made real strides with data in recent years, but much more is needed. To realise improvements in the housing market, better use of data is essential. Whether it is the home buying and selling process, the lettings market, planning or building safety – data must be placed at the heart of UK property policy, and the UPRN is at the core of this.”
The signatories said they believed that wide adoption of the UPRN would be a “significant step forward”, with numerous benefits to the UK economy, the residential market and society.
“Progress has been made in recent years around the use of the UPRN, itself being made open and with it being built into several public data sets, but more robust action is required, and we call on the new government to put the UPRN in the centre stage of its property policy,” states the letter.
Photo © Design Pics Inc/REX/Shutterstock
Send feedback to Samantha McClary
Follow Estates Gazette
