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Addressing and legislation

Both the Board and Spatial Services are committed to Disaster Recovery and Emergency Services. Authoritative addressing is seen as a major benchmark in this commitment as it provides a navigable reference to all properties within NSW.

Road and address locality names are important navigation tools; not only for residents but for councils, emergency services and mapping services. The gazettal of these names reduces confusion, lowers the incidents of duplication and ensures appropriate names are made official. Consequently, the naming process has been standardised to ensure that any changes are easily understood by community members and service providers.

The Board has a statutory responsibility to determine definitive boundaries for suburbs and localities throughout New South Wales. The Board works closely with local councils when defining boundaries because local residents are one of the most significant users of the names. The process of determining boundaries is one of acknowledging existing names and formalising their extent according to common local usage.

The Board is also required to be notified of all road naming proposals. The Surveyor General can object to any road naming proposal that does not meet the Boards guidelines as set out in the following publications:

NSW Address Policy and User Manual (PDF 6.7 MB) June 2021

In addition to the Acts and Regulations which explicitly reference governance arrangements for components of addressing, there are another seven Acts that implicitly reference use of addresses to identify land or location.

The image below displays the three Acts and one Regulation which reference components of addressing, and the other legislation or policies that are significant consumers of street address.

Diagram showing address governance stakeholders

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