Thanks to Graham Hyde for pointing to this letter from Sir Michael Scholar, Chair of the UK Statistics Authority to John Healey, Minister for housing and a selection of other ministers.
In a rebuttal of frequent assertions by both NLPG and OS that they already offer comprehensive national coverage he says
The main reason behind the decision that ONS should invest a substantial budget in the development of a special one-off register of addresses was that it needed it for the Census: the existing sources of address data were some way short of the comprehensive and accurate coverage that was required for Census purposes.
He also questions the claim by CLG that government departments can undertake their duties without a national address database.
For an intragovernmental letter this seems quite strong stuff.
Only the parties to the failed NSAI initiative know the real reasons that it fell through at the eleventh hour. Is it time to try to resuscitate NSAI?
