I recently wrote a blog piece for GeoPlace where I spoke about the importance of data standards such as BS7666 (Spatial datasets for geographical referencing. Specification - General model for gazetteers and spatial referencing).

I argued that such a data standard, which underpins foundational datasets such as the National Streets Gazetteer (NSG), was not just a technical specification but “the fruit of decades of collective effort to impose order on something inherently messy”.

I’m now asking myself the question “well, what’s next?”

In 1924, during a House of Lords debate on the London Traffic Bill, Lord Parmoor talks about coordinating street works - clause 4 of the bill. He stated that street authorities (local authorities responsible for maintenance) must prepare a six-month scheme highlighting the streets that they intend to work on for maintenance and/or improvement. Once approved, the scheme must be shared with statutory undertakers (water, electricity, etc.), who are then required to carry out their own works while the street is closed/already opened by the authority - sound familiar anyone?

Lord Parmoor states:

“It is admitted that a great nuisance is caused nowadays by this kind of thing happening: Immediately one authority has opened up a street and put it down again, another authority, or undertaker, comes and opens it up and occasions once more all the difficulties and obstruction to traffic.”

In 1928, Lord Montagu of Beaulieu expressed similar frustrations in the House of Lords stating that Kent’s roads had been opened up 1,269 times in a single year between 1926-27. In 2025, a Transport Committee inquiry took place on managing the impact of street works, all driven by similar issues. In 2026, the BBC programme Highways to Hell, asks why street and roadworks cause so much disruption - with Angela, a pet shop owner from Rochdale, wondering why she must lose business.

Today, over 100 years on from Lord Parmoor, fewer than 1% of all street works permits in England are marked as collaborative. One day I’d like that to be at least 10%.

That would represent around 200,000 works — there are around 2.2 million completed works a year in England. Yes, I recognise that collaboration isn't always possible, for a variety of reasons. I also recognise that not all work types are suitable. However, we need a target. Why wouldn't the industry collectively aim for 10% as a start?

The problem is not that legislation doesn’t exist. The problem is not that people don’t care, and aren’t aware of the issues.

Organisations such as the Greater London Authority, with their Infrastructure Coordination Service, have done great work in this space:

• Working with regulators (e.g. Ofwat, Ofgem) they have created financial incentives for street works collaboration - see Ofgem’s Collaborative Streetworks ODI-F.
• Creating handbooks and toolkits for others to use.
• Centralising forward works programmes to deliver collaborative street work projects with utilities and local authorities - reducing disruption in the streets of London.

The GMCA are also looking to adopt a similar set up based on the GLA’s model, given its success.

I only have one issue. Scale.

Yes, Mayoral Combined Authorities (MCAs), with elected mayors, are powerful actors for change. They can navigate and setup governance structures, receive funding from government, have easy access to senior leaders, and liaise comfortably with regulators and government departments alike, building strong networks of engaged professionals.

However, don’t sleep on data standards.

We have a track record here:

• NUAR sought to improve New Roads & Street Works Act (NRSWA) provisions such as sections 79 and 80 - focusing on how asset owners record the location of their apparatus and share that information with statutory undertakers. The Data Use and Access Act 2025 was the method used to amend NRSWA to put these changes on a statutory footing - see more details in the NUAR tranche 1 regulations.
• BS7666 and the National Street Gazetteer underpin provisions such as section 53, the street works register. BS7666 is actually named directly in SI 2007/1951 and the National Street Gazetteer feeds nationally significant systems such as Street Manager.

The pattern is consistent. We often use data standards in this space to improve how we fulfil certain legislative provisions.

NRSWA sections 59 and 60 define the current duties statutory undertakers and local authorities have to co-ordinate and to co-operate. I think there’s a strong case to focus on what kind of data standards we might need here too.

If you’re a water company (e.g. Yorkshire Water) planning a mains replacement for 2027, and a gas company (e.g. Northern Gas) is planning a programme of works on the same street in the same year, there is no nationally accepted, standardised way for either of you to know that and exchange that information as early as possible. You’ll often both find out at the permitting stage, by which point the design is signed off, the work contracted out, and the street gets disrupted twice.

Wouldn’t it be nice if it was as easy for utility companies and local authorities to share forward plans 12-24 months in advance, as it is for me to send money from my Monzo account to my Santander account and back again, and then back again once more if I wanted to?

It’s worth being precise about why I can do that with my money. It isn’t just goodwill between banks. It’s the Open Banking Standard - a written, versioned, governed specification that banks implement, still developed and maintained in step with the FCA.

Additionally, reporting on network capacity is something else I’ve been thinking about alongside collaborative street works as an answer to “well what’s next?”. If you want to build four hundred houses, you need to know whether the wastewater network can take them and whether the grid can power them. For example, almost 30,000 new homes were blocked in September 2025 over concerns about wastewater capacity, and in London housebuilding has been held up by a lack of available electricity supply. A data standard for network capacity reporting could close the information gap between those concerned with expanding demand and those responsible for supply.

I also won’t pretend that doing any of this is easy. The data standard is only ever the start. You never standardise anything forever. You lay the thing down and then you’ll spend years trying to keep it in order. The governance, the versioning, the community, and the endless edge cases that nobody anticipated.

It’s why GeoPlace run data quality and improvement schedules. It’s why NUAR published a data quality maturity assessment toolkit. The work to deliver a data standard is permanent, because local variation always tries to take some ground back.

Although unglamorous at times, it’s essential work.

We build abstractions to help us deal with a world that is far more complex and fleeting than we can often manage alone. We then must allocate the time and energy to keep these abstractions chugging along - because the alternative is trying to carry the whole mess around with us in our heads.

So, what’s next?

Neil Brammall and I have co-authored a paper: Proposed data standards for infrastructure forward plans and network capacity reporting: extending the MUDDI model.

A link to the paper can be found here.

It proposes extending the MUDDI model, the OGC’s Model for Underground Data Definition and Integration, to cover forward works plans and network capacity reporting. At the moment, we’re keen to hear from the international community of interest around utilities and street works. We plan to develop and publish some candidate logical models and exemplar implementations that may help to address some of the use cases we highlight in the paper - all of which focus on the issues discussed in this blog.

You can find Neil talking about the paper in his latest blog post here: Reflections on NUAR Part 3.

We’re looking forward to seeing what comes next and remember…

Data standards will often not solve 100% of a problem on their own, but many problems are rarely solved comprehensively and at scale without them.

Chris

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Further reading: the same problem, 1847–2026

Year	Event	Context	Link
1847	Gas / Waterworks Clauses Acts	Rights to dig granted to statutory undertakers.	Gasworks Clauses Act 1847 · Waterworks Clauses Act 1847
1924	London Traffic Bill	First statutory coordination attempt — London only.	Hansard, Lords, 10 July 1924
1928	Lords debate: The Right to Dig Up Public Roads	1,269 openings in Kent in a single year; the same five frustrations we have today.	Hansard, Lords, 17 May 1928
1950	Public Utilities Street Works Bill	Sought to improve on the original Gas / Waterworks Clauses Acts	Hansard, Lords, 9 May 1950 · PUSWA 1950
1984	Horne Review	Its terms of reference asked the review to consider, among other things: “(g) the likely impact of new telecommunications (including cable) systems; (h) the adequacy of present arrangements to respond to highway needs which are caused by multiple openings; (i) the adequacy of the mapping by public utilities of underground services.” All three are still being talked about today.	Hansard, Written Answer, 30 Jan 1984
1991	New Roads and Street Works Act	Among much else, introduced the section 59 / 60 coordination duties.	NRSWA 1991, ss.59–60
2007	Street Works Regulations	Named BS7666 in law: every register kept by a local highway authority “shall be in a form which complies with the system of street referencing specified in Part I of the publication issued by the British Standards Institution on 1st August 2006 entitled Spatial data sets for geographical referencing — specification for a street gazetteer under reference No. BS 7666-1 2006 … as revised or re-issued from time to time.”	The Street Works (Registers, Notices, Directions and Designations) (England) Regulations 2007, reg. 4
2019	GLA Infrastructure Coordination Service pilot	Lane rental-funded, two-year pilot: a neutral convener sharing forward works data. Nine collaborative schemes, 426 days of disruption saved, £831,000 saved for works promoters. London only. Still around and operates today as part of the GLA.	GLA ICS Pilot: Lane Rental industry publication
2025	Data Use and Access Act	Changes made to the NRSWA legislatiin. New measures put in place for how asset owners gather and provide information about underground assets to those who legally require it.	DUAA 2025, Part 3 · NUAR: tranche 1 regulations
2025	Transport Committee: Managing the impact of street works	Recommendation 9 on the difficulties of collaboration and how future work plans are shared. Government response: sharing forward plans is encouraged, not mandatory.	Inquiry publications · Report, 3 July 2025 · Government response, 12 September 2025
2026	Street Manager data	Fewer than 1% of permits marked collaborative.	Kainos: applying behavioural science to roadworks disruption · The Roads Remember
2026	Ofgem Collaborative Streetworks ODI-F	Governance at regulatory level: rewards Gas Distribution Networks for collaborating with other undertakers, to “consolidate activities, minimise repeat excavations, and reduce disruption”. Regional focus; small-scale outcomes.	Collaborative Streetworks ODI-F governance document
2026	Highways to Hell (BBC)	Alex Forsyth emerges from traffic-jam Britain to ask why roadworks cause so many of us so much disruption — and whether there are better ways to manage necessary maintenance.	Highways to Hell