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Subject Author Date
UK Postcodes Eastings and Northings Brian Cryer 03-06-2007
Posted by Brian Cryer on March 6, 2007, 8:49 am
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 Does anyone know a free source of UK postcode data? What I'm after is a
simple lookup from postcode to eastings and northings.

I have access to PAF at work, but I'm thinking of a private project and
don't want to fork out for PAF (so there is a risk that I may end up
ditching the idea before it even gets of the ground).

Thanks.
--
Brian Cryer
www.cryer.co.uk/brian



Posted by PJ Halls on March 6, 2007, 9:49 am
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 Brian Cryer wrote:
> Does anyone know a free source of UK postcode data? What I'm after is a
> simple lookup from postcode to eastings and northings.
>
> I have access to PAF at work, but I'm thinking of a private project and
> don't want to fork out for PAF (so there is a risk that I may end up
> ditching the idea before it even gets of the ground).
>
> Thanks.
A free data source is unlikely, unless / until government (== Treasury)
attitudes to British 'public' data (and the revenue they bring) changes.
Do not try to hold your breath. The PAF data are owned by Royal Mail
and the coordinate data supplied with PAF is owned by Ordnance Survey.
Anyone who uses either has to pay an appropriate royalty fee.

So even if you went out and GPS'd every delivery point in Britain (there
are about 5million of them), you would still owe Royal Mail for use of
the PAF. It might prove cheaper in the medium term, though / you might
have something to sell yourself that covers the costs of PAF.

Peter

Posted by chris.faulkner@gmail.com on March 8, 2007, 4:01 am
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> Brian Cryer wrote:
> > Does anyone know a free source of UK postcode data? What I'm after is a
> > simple lookup from postcode to eastings and northings.
>
> > I have access to PAF at work, but I'm thinking of a private project and
> > don't want to fork out for PAF (so there is a risk that I may end up
> > ditching the idea before it even gets of the ground).
>

[snip]

> So even if you went out and GPS'd every delivery point in Britain (there
> are about 5million of them), you would still owe Royal Mail for use of
> the PAF. It might prove cheaper in the medium term, though / you might
> have something to sell yourself that covers the costs of PAF.

I am not sure about that. If all you want is postcode, easting,
northing then I am not sure why you need the PAF or even a license to
use the PAF. There are a couple of open projects which are collecting
street and postcode data using GPS. Check out http://www.freethepostcode.org/
and http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Main_Page. They have legal
sections.

Thre problem with these comparing to PAF, or codepoint from the OS is
that they have less than 100% coverage. Also, as I recall, the OS
publish stats around the accuracy of their postcode positions. I am
not sure these open projects do the same.

Chris Faulkner


Posted by Brian Cryer on March 8, 2007, 4:41 am
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> Brian Cryer wrote:
>> Does anyone know a free source of UK postcode data? What I'm after is a
>> simple lookup from postcode to eastings and northings.
>>
>> I have access to PAF at work, but I'm thinking of a private project and
>> don't want to fork out for PAF (so there is a risk that I may end up
>> ditching the idea before it even gets of the ground).
>>
>> Thanks.
> A free data source is unlikely, unless / until government (== Treasury)
> attitudes to British 'public' data (and the revenue they bring) changes.
> Do not try to hold your breath. The PAF data are owned by Royal Mail and
> the coordinate data supplied with PAF is owned by Ordnance Survey. Anyone
> who uses either has to pay an appropriate royalty fee.
>
> So even if you went out and GPS'd every delivery point in Britain (there
> are about 5million of them), you would still owe Royal Mail for use of the
> PAF. It might prove cheaper in the medium term, though / you might have
> something to sell yourself that covers the costs of PAF.
>
> Peter

Thanks Peter.

Interestingly I came across a couple of sites which are trying to produce
free postcode files - basically asking people to contribute GPS coordinates
for their own postcode. http://www.kubelabs.com/ukpostcodedata.php being one
of these. However, having a few thousand postcodes in their database is a
long way short of the many millions of records I have in my PAF database at
work.

Your closing paragraph is interesting. I'm probably missing something, but
if someone were to visit every house in England ask them their postcode and
note their GPS position (okay, not realistic, but is the type of thing the
above site is trying), why would you still need to pay for PAF? because you
wouldn't then need it? (assuming I only wanted a list of postcodes and their
location and not the other information PAF contains.)

Thanks.
--
Brian Cryer
www.cryer.co.uk/brian





Posted by PJ Halls on March 12, 2007, 11:47 am
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Brian Cryer wrote:
>
>>Brian Cryer wrote:
>>
>>>Does anyone know a free source of UK postcode data? What I'm after is a
>>>simple lookup from postcode to eastings and northings.
>>>
>>>I have access to PAF at work, but I'm thinking of a private project and
>>>don't want to fork out for PAF (so there is a risk that I may end up
>>>ditching the idea before it even gets of the ground).
>>>
>>>Thanks.
>>
>>A free data source is unlikely, unless / until government (== Treasury)
>>attitudes to British 'public' data (and the revenue they bring) changes.
>>Do not try to hold your breath. The PAF data are owned by Royal Mail and
>>the coordinate data supplied with PAF is owned by Ordnance Survey. Anyone
>>who uses either has to pay an appropriate royalty fee.
>>
>>So even if you went out and GPS'd every delivery point in Britain (there
>>are about 5million of them), you would still owe Royal Mail for use of the
>>PAF. It might prove cheaper in the medium term, though / you might have
>>something to sell yourself that covers the costs of PAF.
>>
>>Peter
>
>
> Thanks Peter.
>
> Interestingly I came across a couple of sites which are trying to produce
> free postcode files - basically asking people to contribute GPS coordinates
> for their own postcode. http://www.kubelabs.com/ukpostcodedata.php being one
> of these. However, having a few thousand postcodes in their database is a
> long way short of the many millions of records I have in my PAF database at
> work.
>
> Your closing paragraph is interesting. I'm probably missing something, but
> if someone were to visit every house in England ask them their postcode and
> note their GPS position (okay, not realistic, but is the type of thing the
> above site is trying), why would you still need to pay for PAF? because you
> wouldn't then need it? (assuming I only wanted a list of postcodes and their
> location and not the other information PAF contains.)
>
> Thanks.
It is a question of whether asking each householder to supply the
information given them by Royal Mail might be construed as a legal
intent to avoid the copyright dues. There are also the issues of
keeping up to date as Postcodes change and validating that given by the
householder - there are a lot of inaccurate Postcodes in use.

Peter


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