As Geovation marks its 10th anniversary, HM Land Registry and Ordnance Survey are delighted to announce the latest innovative start-up companies to join the Geovation Accelerator programme in London. The Geovation Accelerator programme will provide these promising new tech start-ups with focused support, access to quality location and property data and resources to help them develop and thrive.

The Clerkenwell based Accelerator programme has produced a steady pipeline of success since launching in 2015. Eighty-four start-ups have been helped to grow, which has seen them create more than 200 new jobs and raise £23.3 million in investment funding.

The latest Geovation cohort to be supported by HMLR and OS:

• Veya: making important information available to homebuyers earlier in the conveyancing process
• Crowdhaus: modernising the property search market by providing the 21st century with ‘For Sale’ Smart Signs
• SociAbility: the SociAbility mobile app allows users to quickly and easily find detailed and reliable accessibility information for local social venues and shops
• Lairvue Ltd: a property viewing company providing a comprehensive 7 day viewing service to make sure property viewings do not get cancelled, postponed or missed
• Earthscope: finds, forecasts and assesses wildfires by harnessing AI, satellite images and the weather
• Hammer-Flights: provides an adaptive flight automation platform for drone service providers and in-house drone programs to collect quick and precise data
• Atmo: provides air quality monitoring to heavy industry to minimise exposure to personnel

Andrew Trigg, Chief Geospatial & Data Officer at HM Land Registry says:

We couldn’t be more excited to welcome the latest cohort of PropTech innovators, and help them apply our data to solving important social and commercial challenges. 10 years into the programme, we’re still seeing ever more novel and exciting ideas with each new intake.

Head of Geovation, Alex Wrottesley, adds:

This month Geovation celebrates its tenth anniversary. It has been an incredible 10 years that has seen this Ordnance Survey initiative grow and establish itself within the start-up and entrepreneurial community. It’s been a real team effort and we’re now looking forward to the next 10 years and helping even more start-ups launch and prosper.

Following Geovation’s recent expansion into Scotland, Ordnance Survey (OS) and Registers of Scotland (RoS) have also welcomed the first group of companies participating in the inaugural Geovation Scotland Accelerator programme:

• Folarity: ‘Forest Planner’ is a software as a service (SAAS) platform consisting of a website and mobile apps that will help forest managers plan and monitor their woodlands
• Walks and Waterfalls: a treasure app to help users locate Scotland’s waterfalls, wild swimming spots, undiscovered walks and heritage sites
• Myfaktor: a community-driven, property factoring platform to equip people living in residential blocks and developments with tools to reduce maintenance costs through optional self-management

About Geovation

Geovation is an initiative dedicated to supporting open innovation and collaboration using location and property data. Location is at the heart of many of the most successful digital products and services. Land and property is the foundation of our national economy. The Geovation Accelerator programme is delivered and funded jointly by Ordnance Survey and HM Land Registry.

About HM Land Registry

HM Land Registry is a government department created in 1862. It operates as an executive agency and a trading fund and its running costs are covered by the fees paid by the users of its services. Its ambition is to become the world’s leading land registry for speed, simplicity and an open approach to data.

HM Land Registry safeguards land and property ownership worth in excess of £7 trillion, including over £1 trillion of mortgages. The Land Register contains more than 25 million titles showing evidence of ownership for some 87% of the land mass of England and Wales.

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Health and Social Care Secretary Matt Hancock is setting out his ambition for every patient in the country to have access to social prescribing schemes on the NHS as readily as they do medical care.

Social prescribing involves helping patients to improve their health, wellbeing and social welfare by connecting them to community services. This can include activities such as art and singing classes.

The National Academy for Social Prescribing will work to:

• standardise the quality and range of social prescribing available to patients across the country
• increase awareness of the benefits of social prescribing by building and promoting the evidence base
• develop and share best practice, as well as looking at new models and sources for funding
• bring together all partners from health, housing and local government with arts, culture and sporting organisations to maximise the role of social prescribing
• focus on developing training and accreditation across sectors

The indepedent academy will receive £5 million of government funding and will be led by Professor Helen Stokes-Lampard, the outgoing Chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners.

It has been developed in partnership across government, with Sport England, Arts Council England and a range of voluntary sector partners.

Alongside the benefits for patients, the National Academy for Social Prescribing could reduce the burden on the NHS.

Only 60% of Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) use social prescribing for patients with anxiety, mental health problems and dementia.

In some parts of the country, patients with long-term conditions who have had access to social prescribing link workers have said they are less isolated, attended 47% fewer hospital appointments and made 38% fewer visits to A&E.

The NHS Long Term Plan includes plans to recruit over 1,000 trained social prescribing link workers by 2020 to 2021, with the aim of 900,000 people being referred to social prescribing schemes by then. 

The government’s Loneliness Strategy committed to every eligible patient in the country having access to a social prescribing connector scheme by 2023.

Health and Social Care Secretary Matt Hancock said:

This academy is much more important than any one individual. It’s about all of us in health, arts, culture, sport, communities coming together around one simple principle: that prevention is better than cure

Social prescribing is a huge part of this. There are thousands of people up and down the country right now who are already benefiting from activities like reading circles, choir groups and walking football. 

The National Academy for Social Prescribing will act as a catalyst to bring together the excellent work already being done across the NHS and beyond, building on our NHS Long Term Plan’s ambition to get over 2.5 million more people benefitting from personalised care within the next 5 years.

Professor Helen Stokes-Lampard said:

I’m thrilled to have been appointed as chair of this new academy. Social prescribing has always been so close to my heart as a practising GP. It’s what good GPs have always done in terms of getting the best help and support for our patients beyond the medicines we also provide them with.

I’m looking forward to starting work with colleagues from so many sectors to bring social prescribing into the mainstream, to train and educate social prescribers of the future and to establish a great evidence base and raise the profile of this fantastic initiative.

The government has introduced the Air Traffic Management and Unmanned Aircraft Bill to modernise airspace and tackle illegal use of unmanned aircraft.

The bill will grant the Transport Secretary new powers to ensure that airports modernise their airspace, and fine those that don’t implement changes quickly enough.

The bill will also hand police powers to tackle the unlawful use of unmanned aircraft. This includes giving police the ability to require a person to land an unmanned aircraft, issue fixed penalty notices for certain offences and introduce new stop and search powers where particular offences involving an unmanned aircraft have been committed.

Grant Shapps, Transport Secretary, said:

Modernising the use of airspace will allow us to generate lower CO2 emissions from aviation, reduce noise for those near flight-paths and improve punctuality for passengers.

Drones have great potential to transform how we move people and goods, and could help save lives in search and rescue missions. This new bill will help us ensure that drone technology is used safely.

The legislation is a key part of the government’s approach to drones, which will ensure individuals, businesses and emergency services in the UK can continue to harness the economic and social benefits of drones, while cracking down on misuse and disruption.

The proposals will also award more power to the Transport Secretary, to boost aviation infrastructure, helping to deliver quicker, quieter and cleaner journeys.

The Charity Commission has opened an inquiry into Kinson Community Association (215169) due to concerns of mismanagement and/or misconduct at the charity. The community centre is set up to promote spiritual, mental, physical and social development to the Kinson community in Bournemouth. The inquiry was opened on 19 September 2019.

The charity was entered into a class inquiry in February 2018 to look into charities which had repeatedly defaulted on their statutory filing requirements. Despite continued engagement during the course of that inquiry the charity’s financial accounts for the FYE 31 December 2015 and 2016 are still outstanding and 31 December FYE 2017 are now also overdue.

These issues raise concerns over the charity’s accountability and transparency. As such, the inquiry will examine the governance, management and administration of the charity, including having regard to:

• the extent to which the trustees have complied with previously issued regulatory guidance.
• whether the trustees have properly exercised their duties and responsibilities under charity law in the administration of the charity and in particular their duty to account for the charity’s funds.

It is the Commission’s policy, after it has concluded an inquiry, to publish a report detailing what issues the inquiry looked at, what actions were undertaken as part of the inquiry and what the outcomes were. Reports of previous inquiries by the Commission are available on GOV.UK.

Ends.

Notes to Editors

1. The Charity Commission is the independent regulator of charities in England and Wales; our role is to regulate charity trustees’ compliance with the charity law framework.
2. Double defaulters are charities that have defaulted on their statutory obligations to meet reporting requirements by failing to file their annual documents for two or more times in the last five years.

Published 23 October 2019