To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government pursuant to the answer of 20 May 2008, Official Report, column 263W, on departmental consultants, for what purpose her Department has hired Intelligent Addressing Ltd to provide National Land and Property Gazetteer address matching. (229619)

Intelligent Addressing Ltd. has been hired to integrate the technology systems for FiReControl with data from the National Land and Property Gazetteer (NLPG).

The FiReControl project will deliver a national network of regional control centres for fire and rescue services in England. The centres will provide emergency call handling, mobilisation and incident support services. A key component of the control centres will be a mobilising gazetteer—a list of locations which may be used in the identification of the location of an incident. The Department has made a strategic decision to use the NLPG as the core of the mobilising gazetteer for the regional control centres.