Over 70 per cent of local authorities and 90 per cent of highways authorities have signed up to share data on their critical underground assets on the National Underground Asset Register (NUAR).

Operated by Ordnance Survey on behalf of the Government, NUAR is a government digital service that provides secure, instant access to a map of underground pipes and cables. It shares buried infrastructure data for telecoms, energy, water, transport, local authorities and highways authorities.

Currently, over 80 per cent of known underground assets are mapped, with over 360 asset owners’ data published, covering more than 3.2 million km of pipes and cables.

Rob West, Acting Assistant Engineer at Coventry City Council, added: “Before NUAR, we would have to log into multiple providers, each with a different user interface, which was a very jarring and inefficient way of working compared to NUAR. We were also unknowingly chasing to find out who owned our own assets. If you like efficiency - and more information  sign up to NUAR.”

Durham County Council’s Drainage and Coastal Protection Manager, Brian Weatherall, said: “NUAR is a real game changer and speeds up the work so much – and speed is money. The quicker we can get onto a job and the quicker we can solve a problem, the cheaper it is.

“Previously, with older systems that I’ve been involved with for 20 to 30 years, it can take a couple of weeks to find out where services underground are. In an emergency, you wouldn’t be able to wait that long. You would have to go in and hand dig very carefully, with the associated hazards that come with that.

“The game changer with NUAR is that we know almost instantly exactly what we are dealing with in the ground. Often, it will lead to the solution as well. If there are a lot of services in that area, it is quite common for those to interfere with highways drainage, so NUAR can lead us to where we need to look.”