If you need more regularly updated NaPTAN view lists of the gazetteer for each area with multimap links.
If you can meet terms and conditions for use of the National Gazetter you can obtain a password to download the National Gazetteer for particular areas or for the whole of UK.
You can also view National Gazetteer points and associated data in the NaPTAN viewer.
The National Gazetteer points are visible to the public in Tranport Direct maps if they search for particular bus stops using the "City/Town/Suburb" option.
If you have access to the ITO NaPTAN service the localities and the bus stops that form them can be viewed powerfully there.
If you are a local authority you have been issued with a password to access the on line on-line editing. Additional General Guidance Notes are available. There are some Notes specifically about defining localities and allocating stops to them (there is a Word version).
Once you are online an option labelled Step 1 will list all the localities currently held for your area. Some have an X by them to show that they are no longer in use. You may need to remove an X from some that you think should be in use that are not currently so. You may need some additional ones that are not listed. Typically these can be for new housing areas that did not exist when the original list was compiled, perhaps as long ago as the 1960s.
To add a new place, choose a place nearby and click on New to copy it. You then change the name and coordinates. For the coordinates it is best to choose a central location that is on or close to a road. A village Hall or school is a good guide as to what the centre is. Bus stops may sometimes be a good indication but be aware that sometimes the bus may pass the village on a road nearby rather than come into the centre, so bus stops are not always the best point to use.
Places can be linked together so that smaller places can be shown as part of larger ones in parent/child relationships.
Child localities may be appropriate for towns. If a town has well known suburbs these could be children. First you need to Edit the locality name of the town and under the "Type" setting change this to Parent. Then go back to the menu and select Step 2a. Choose the town name from this list and mark the localities that you want to be children of the town. The list of places is in order of distance from the centre of the parent locality so you would expect those localities at the top of the list to be children, but not those at the bottom.
In rural areas where settlements stand alone with fields or open country between them there is little point in establishing parent child relationships between them. The exceptions could be small Islands where making the island a parent and the children the settlements on the island can be a very useful grouping. In some places, for example Orkney, the parish area names are very strong and so creating the parishes as parents and the settlements as children is appropriate, but this would not make sense in areas where the parish names are less well known than the settlements.
Alternative locality names can be assigned using Step 2b. This allows for two names to be assigned to one place, for instance if there are two languages, as in Wales, but also in one language where a place may be known by two names. An example is
| Hull | Primary | E0055009 |
| Kingston upon Hull | Alternative | N0078324 |
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© Traveline 2010, Last updated: 22 March 2010