Postcodes in the United Kingdom
s used in the United Kingdom are known as postcodes. They are alphanumeric and were adopted nationally between 11 October 1959 and 1974, having been devised by the General Post Office. A full postcode is known as a "postcode unit" and designates an area with several addresses or a single major delivery point.
The structure of a postcode is two alphanumeric codes, the first having between two and four characters and the second, three characters. First, one or two letters indicate the postcode area, followed by one or two digits signifying a district within that area. This is followed by a space and then a number denoting a sector within said district, and finally by two letters which are allocated to streets or sides of a street. Postcode areas are often named for a major town or city—such as B for Birmingham—but may also be geographic in nature—such as HS for the Outer Hebrides.
Each postcode area contains a number of post towns which are not themselves alphabetically denoted; however each will generally constitute one or more postcode districts. Example: a sizeable part of southern England is covered by the GU postcode area, named after the town of Guildford. Guildford itself consists of postal districts GU1 and GU2. Nearby Woking, a major commuter town— away—is a post town within the postal district GU22. The central part of the town/city the postcode area is named after will have the number 1 e.g. B1, LS1, M1. However, other post towns within the area are then either treated alphabetically—particularly in London—e.g. Chingford on the north-eastern edge of London being E4, whereas adjacent Walthamstow to the south being E17–or geographically—e.g. the Outer Hebrides area HS numbering the districts north to south.
As a general rule, large post towns are numbered from the centre outward such that outlying parts have higher numbered districts, but the disparate post towns within a postal area can be numbered based on various criteria—the town the postal area is named after excepted, this always being 1. In particular, one cannot reliably infer the centrality of a postcode district within a postcode area from the postcode alone. For instance, SE1 covers a large part of Central London south of the Thames whereas SE2 covers Abbey Wood at the far end of the Elizabeth Line. See postcode area.
Postcodes have been adopted for a wide range of purposes in addition to aiding the sorting of mail: for calculating insurance premiums, designating destinations in route planning software and as the lowest level of aggregation in census enumeration. The boundaries of each postcode unit and within these the full address data of currently about 29 million addresses are stored, maintained and periodically updated in the Postcode Address File database.
The initial system of named postal districts, developed in London and other large cities from 1857, evolved towards the present form: in 1917 London was split into broad numbered subdivisions, and this extended to the other cities in 1934. Since the local government reorganisation of London in the 1960s, parts of Greater London lie outside the London postal area. These include large parts of the "TW", "KT", "SM", "CR", "HA", and "UB" postcode areas, among a few others.
As examples of the postcode system, the postcode of the University of Roehampton in London is SW15 5PU, where SW stands for south-west London; the postcode of GCHQ is GL51 0EX, where GL signifies the postal area of Gloucester. The postal town can be a wide area and does not relate to a specific town, county or region. GL51 is one of the postcodes for the town of Cheltenham.
Theoretically, deliveries can reach their destination using the house number and postcode alone; however, this is against Royal Mail guidelines, which request the use of a full address.
History
Earlier postal districts
London
The London post town covers 40% of Greater London. On inception, it was divided into ten postal districts: EC, WC, N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W, and NW. The S and NE sectors were later abolished. In 1917, as a wartime measure to improve efficiency, each postal district was subdivided into sub-districts each identified by a number; the area served directly by the district head office was allocated the number 1; the other numbers were allocated alphabetically by delivery office, e.g. N2 East Finchley delivery office, N3 Finchley delivery office, N4 Finsbury Park delivery office etc. Since then these sub-districts have changed little.Some older road signs in Hackney still show the North East sector/district.
Other large towns
Following the successful introduction of postal districts in London, the system was extended to other large towns and cities. Liverpool was divided into Eastern, Northern, Southern and Western districts in 1864/65, and Manchester and Salford into eight numbered districts in 1867/68.In 1917, Dublin—then still part of the United Kingdom—was divided into numbered postal districts. These continue in use in a modified form by An Post, the postal service of the Republic of Ireland. In 1923, Glasgow was divided in a similar way to London, with numbered districts preceded by a letter denoting the compass point.
In January 1932 the Postmaster General approved the designation of some predominantly urban areas into numbered districts. In November 1934 the Post Office announced the introduction of numbered districts in "every provincial town in the United Kingdom large enough to justify it". Pamphlets were issued to each householder and business in ten areas notifying them of the number of the district in which their premises lay. The pamphlets included a map of the districts, and copies were made available at local head post offices. The public were "particularly invited" to include the district number in the address at the head of letters.
A publicity campaign in the following year encouraged the use of the district numbers. The slogan for the campaign was "For speed and certainty always use a postal district number on your letters and notepaper". A poster was fixed to every pillar box in the affected areas bearing the number of the district and appealing for the public's co-operation. Every post office in the numbered district was also to display this information. Printers of Christmas cards and stationery were requested to always include district numbers in addresses, and election agents for candidates in the upcoming general election were asked to ensure they correctly addressed the 100 million items of mail they were expected to post. Businesses were issued with a free booklet containing maps and listings of the correct district number for every street in the ten areas.
The ten areas were:
- Birmingham
- Brighton/Hove
- Bristol
- Edinburgh
- Glasgow
- Leeds/Bradford
- Liverpool
- Manchester/Salford
- Newcastle upon Tyne
- Sheffield
Modern postcode system
The Post Office experimented with electromechanical sorting machines in the late 1950s. These devices presented an envelope to an operator, who would press a button indicating which bin to sort the letter into. Postcodes were suggested to increase the efficiency of this process by removing the need for the sorter to remember the correct sorting for as many places. In January 1959 the Post Office analysed the results of a survey on public attitudes towards the use of postal codes, choosing a town in which to experiment with codes. The envisaged format was a six-character alphanumeric code with three letters designating the geographical area and three numbers to identify the individual address. On 28 July Ernest Marples, the Postmaster General, announced that Norwich had been selected, and that each of the 150,000 private and business addresses would receive a code by October. Norwich had been selected as it already had eight automatic mail sorting machines in use. The original Norwich format consisted of "NOR," followed by a space, then a two-digit number, and finally a single letter.In October 1965, Tony Benn as Postmaster General announced that postal coding was to be extended to the rest of the country in the next few years.
On 1 May 1967 postcodes were introduced in Croydon. The many postcodes for central Croydon began with "CRO", while those of the surrounding post towns with CR2, CR3 and CR4. The uniform system of a set of three final characters after the space was adopted. This was to be the beginning of a ten-year plan, costing an estimated £24 million. Within two years it was expected that full coding would be used in Aberdeen, Belfast, Brighton, Bristol, Bromley, Cardiff, Coventry, Manchester, Newcastle upon Tyne, Newport, Reading, Sheffield, Southampton and the Western district of London. By 1967, codes had been introduced to Aberdeen, Southampton, Brighton and Derby. In 1970, codes were introduced to the London Western and North Western postal districts. In December 1970, much Christmas mail was postmarked with the message "Remember to use the Postal Code" although codes were used to sort mail in only a handful of sorting offices.
During 1971, occupants of addresses began to receive notification of their postcode. Asked in the House of Commons about the completion of the coding exercise, the Minister of State for Posts and Telecommunications, Sir John Eden, stated that it was expected to be completed during 1972. The scheme was finalised in 1974 when Norwich was completely re-coded but the scheme tested in Croydon was sufficiently close to the final design for it to be retained, with CRO standardised as CR0 thus removing the need to create a CR1 district.
A quirk remained: the central Newport area was allocated NPT at a similar time to Croydon becoming CRO, and surrounding areas were allocated NP1–NP8. NPT lasted until the end of 1984 when it was recoded NP9.
Girobank's GIR 0AA was the last domestic postcode with a fully alphabetical outward code. That code no longer exists in the Royal Mail's PAF system, but was taken over by the bank's current owners, Santander UK.
Adaptation of earlier systems into national system
When the national postcode system was introduced, many existing postal districts were incorporated into it, so that postcodes in Toxteth start with L8. The districts in both Manchester and Salford gained M postcodes, so Salford 7 became M7 and so on. The old coding lives on in a small number of street signs with "Salford 7" at the bottom. In other cases, the district numbers were replaced with unrelated numbers. In Glasgow many of its G-prefixed numbers are not used as C1 became G1, W1 became G11, N1 became G21, E1 became G31, S1 became G41, SW1 became G51, and so on. In London, 1917-created postal districts are mapped unchanged to those of today but its much enlarged administrative area, Greater London, was created in April 1965. From that month the remaining 60% of Greater London's area has postcodes referring to 13 other post towns. Additionally, there were too few postcodes to adequately cover districts in central London, so these were subdivided with a letter suffix rather than being split into new numbered districts so as to retain the familiar codes.GB postcodes available as OpenData
Prior to 1 April 2010, the Royal Mail licensed use of the postcode database for a charge of about £4000 per year. Following a campaign and a government consultation in 2009, the Ordnance Survey released Code-Point Open, detailing each current postcode in Great Britain together with a geo-code for re-use free of charge under an attribution-only licence.Postcodes linked to a variety of UK geographies
The Office for National Statistics maintains and publishes a series of freely available, downloadable postcode products that link all current and terminated UK postcodes to a range of administrative, health, statistical and other geographies using the Code-Point Open grid reference.Formatting
Overview
The postcodes are alphanumeric, and are variable in length: ranging from six to eight characters. Each postcode is divided into two parts separated by a single space: the outward code and the inward code respectively. The outward code includes the postcode area and the postcode district, respectively. The inward code includes the postcode sector and the postcode unit respectively. Examples of postcodes are "SW1W 0NY", "PO16 7GZ", "GU16 7HF", and "L1 8JQ".Outward code
The outward code is the part of the postcode before the single space in the middle. It is between two and four characters long. Examples of outward codes are "L1", "W1A", "RH1", "RH10" or "SE1P". A few outward codes are non-geographic, not divulging where mail is to be sent.Postcode area
The postcode area is part of the outward code. The postcode area is either one or two characters long and is alphabetical. Examples of postcode areas are "L" for Liverpool, "RH" for Redhill and "EH" for Edinburgh. A postal area may cover a wide area, for example "RH" also covers parts of north Sussex and "BT" covers the whole of Northern Ireland.Postcode district
The postcode district is one digit, two digits or a digit followed by a letter.Inward code
The inward code is the part of the postcode after the single space in the middle. It is three characters long. The inward code assists in the delivery of post within a postal district. Examples of inward codes are "0NY", "7GZ", "7HF", or "8JQ".Postcode sector
The postcode sector is made up of a single digit.Postcode unit
The postcode unit is two characters added to the end of the postcode sector. A postcode unit generally represents a street, part of a street, a single address, a group of properties, a single property, a sub-section of the property, an individual organisation or a subsection of the organisation. The level of discrimination is often based on the amount of mail received by the premises or business. Examples of postcode units are "SW1W 0NY", "PO16 7GZ", "GU16 7HF", and "L1 8JQ".Validation
The format is as follows, where A signifies a letter and 9 a digit:| Format | Coverage | Example |
| AA9A 9AA | WC postcode area; EC1–EC4, NW1W, SE1P, SW1 | EC1A 1BB |
| A9A 9AA | E1, N1, W1 | W1A 0AX |
| A9 9AA | B, E, G, L, M, N, S, W | M1 1AE |
| A99 9AA | B, E, G, L, M, N, S, W | B33 8TH |
| AA9 9AA | All other postcodes | CR2 6XH |
| AA99 9AA | All other postcodes | DN55 1PT |
Notes:
- As all formats end with 9AA, the first part of a postcode can easily be extracted by ignoring the last three characters.
- Areas with only single-digit districts: BR, FY, HA, HD, HG, HR, HS, HX, JE, LD, SM, SR, WC, WN, ZE
- Areas with only double-digit districts: AB, LL, SO
- Areas with a district '0' : BL, BS, CM, CR, FY, HA, PR, SL, SS
- The following central London single-digit districts have been further divided by inserting a letter after the digit and before the space: EC1–EC4, SW1, W1, WC1, WC2 and parts of E1, N1, NW1 and SE1.
- The letters Q, V and X are not used in the first position.
- The letters I, J and Z are not used in the second position.
- The only letters to appear in the third position are A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, J, K, P, S, T, U and W when the structure starts with A9A.
- The only letters to appear in the fourth position are A, B, E, H, M, N, P, R, V, W, X and Y when the structure starts with AA9A.
- The final two letters do not use C, I, K, M, O or V, so as not to resemble digits or each other when hand-written.
- Postcode sectors are one of ten digits: 0 to 9, with 0 only used once 9 has been used in a post town, save for Croydon and Newport.
The following regular expression can be used for the purpose of validation:
^? ?$The following regular expression can be used for the purpose of validation and includes postcode formats from Special Cases:
^ ?|BFPO ?|$Post towns
All or part of one or more postcode districts are grouped into post towns. Larger post towns may use more than one postcode district, for example Crawley uses RH10 and RH11. In a minority of cases, a single number can cover two post towns—for example, the WN8 district includes Wigan and Skelmersdale post towns.Special cases
Crown dependencies
The Channel Islands and the Isle of Man established their own postal administrations separate from the UK in 1969. Despite this, they adopted the UK-format postcodes in 1993–94: Guernsey using GY, the Isle of Man using IM, and Jersey using JE.The independent jurisdiction of Sark was assigned a unique postcode prefix GY10 in 2011 to differentiate it from Alderney. The CEO of Guernsey Post, Boley Smillie, said "this has been a long time coming" and "... Sark should have had its own identity back then ".
British Overseas Territories
Some of the British Overseas Territories have their own postcodes or postcode systems:| Postcode | Location |
| AI-2640 | Anguilla |
| ASCN 1ZZ | Ascension Island |
| BBND 1ZZ | British Indian Ocean Territory |
| BFPO 57 / BF1 2AT BFPO 58 / BF1 2AU | Akrotiri and Dhekelia |
| BIQQ 1ZZ | British Antarctic Territory |
| FIQQ 1ZZ | Falkland Islands |
| GX11 1AA | Gibraltar |
| KYn-nnnn | Cayman Islands |
| MSR-nnnn | Montserrat |
| PCRN 1ZZ | Pitcairn Islands |
| SIQQ 1ZZ | South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands |
| STHL 1ZZ | Saint Helena |
| TDCU 1ZZ | Tristan da Cunha |
| TKCA 1ZZ | Turks and Caicos Islands |
| VG-nnnn | British Virgin Islands |
| ll nn | Bermuda |
These were introduced because mail was often sent to the wrong place, e.g., for St Helena to St Helens, Merseyside and Ascension Island to Asunción, Paraguay, and many online companies would not accept addresses without a postcode. Mail from the UK continues to be treated as international, not inland, and sufficient postage must be used. Royal Mail's Heathrow centre collects all live underpaid mail for surcharging, and there is a reciprocal arrangement with postal services around the world to collect. An agreed payment based on volumes is made, year on year.
Other forms of postage are collected at local mail centres, but Heathrow collects those that still get forwarded to them. Bermuda, the UK's most populous remaining overseas territory, has developed its own postcode system, with unique postcodes for street and PO Box addresses, as have the Cayman Islands, Montserrat and the British Virgin Islands. Montserrat recently introduced postal codes, and a system has been under consideration in Gibraltar with the code GX11 1AA being introduced as the generic postcode for the territory in the interim. Postcodes are not used in the Turks and Caicos Islands—the TKCA 1ZZ designation is generally unknown.
British Overseas Territories typically have a local or UK government postal system operator, even if a postal code is assigned by Royal Mail for internal UK routing.
British Forces Post Office (BFPO)
The British Forces Post Office provides a postal service to HM Forces separate from that provided by Royal Mail in the United Kingdom, with BFPO addresses used for the delivery of mail in the UK and around the world. BFPO codes such as "BFPO 801" serve the same function as postal codes for civilian addresses, with the last line of the address consisting of "BFPO" followed a space and a number of 1 to 4 digits.For consistency with the format of other UK addresses, in 2012 BFPO and Royal Mail jointly introduced an optional alternative postcode format for BFPO addresses, using the new non-geographic postcode area "BF" and the notional post town "BFPO". Each BFPO number is assigned to a postcode in the standard UK format, beginning "BF1". The database was released commercially in March 2012 as part of the Royal Mail Postal Address File. A postcode is not required if the traditional "BFPO nnnn" format is used.
Non-geographic codes
Most postcodes apply to a geographic area but some are used only for routing and cannot be used for navigation or estimating distances. They are often used for direct marketing and PO boxes. Non-geographic postcode area BX is used solely for non-geographic addresses, with codes independent of the location of the recipient. Some postcode sectors or districts are set aside solely for non-geographic postcodes, including EC50, BS98, BT58, BX1–BX9, IM99, M60, N1P, NE99, SA99, SW9, WV99, WV98 and JE4. Also the first two numbers can be from the range 91 to 95 for businesses and a range 96 to 99 for Government departments. The letters HQ for the last two letters could also it most likely is a non-graphical postcode of that Royal Mail holds the mail which a redirection, bulk mail delivery or open and scan to email service is available.Girobank's headquarters in Bootle used the non-geographic postcode GIR 0AA. There is also a special postcode for letters to Santa/Father Christmas, XM4 5HQ.
Many non-geographic postcodes do not appear on Royal Mail's own online postcode finder tool or their Click and Drop online postage printing tool, which can add to confusion when responding to organisations that use such addresses. Likewise, delivery services or couriers other than Royal Mail may not be able to deliver to such non-physical addresses.
Special postcodes
are allocated by Royal Mail's Address Management Unit and cannot be purchased or specified by the recipient. However, Royal Mail sometimes assigns semi-mnemonic postcodes to high-profile organisations.Prominent examples are:
| Postcode | Organisation |
| BS98 1TL | TV Licensing |
| BX1 1LT | Lloyds Bank formerly known as Lloyds TSB Bank—non-geographic address |
| BX2 1LB | Bank of Scotland —non-geographic address |
| BX3 2BB | Barclays Bank—non-geographic address |
| BX4 7SB | TSB Bank |
| BX5 5AT | VAT Central Unit of HM Revenue and Customs —non-geographic address |
| CF10 1BH | Lloyds Banking Group |
| CF99 1NA | Senedd Cymru |
| CV4 8UW | University of Warwick |
| CV35 0DB | Aston Martin after their long line of iconic sports cars that bear the "DB" moniker |
| DA1 1RT | Dartford F.C. |
| DE99 3GG | Egg Banking |
| DE55 4SW | Slimming World |
| DH98 1BT | British Telecom |
| DH99 1NS | National Savings certificates administration |
| E14 5HQ | HSBC headquarters at 8 Canada Square, Canary Wharf |
| E14 5JP | JP Morgan |
| E16 1XL | ExCeL London |
| E20 2AQ | Olympic Aquatics Centre |
| E20 2BB | Olympic Basketball Arena |
| E20 2ST | Olympic Stadium |
| E20 3BS | Olympic Broadcast Centre |
| E20 3EL | Olympic Velodrome |
| E20 3ET | Olympic Eton Manor Tennis Courts |
| E20 3HB | Olympic Handball Arena |
| E20 3HY | Olympic Hockey Stadium |
| E98 1SN | The Sun newspaper |
| E98 1ST | The Sunday Times newspaper |
| E98 1TT | The Times newspaper |
| EC2N 2DB | Deutsche Bank |
| EC4Y 0HQ | Royal Mail Group Ltd headquarters |
| EH12 1HQ | Royal Bank of Scotland headquarters |
| EH99 1SP | Scottish Parliament |
| G58 1SB | National Savings Bank |
| GIR 0AA | Girobank |
| IV21 2LR | Two Lochs Radio |
| L30 4GB | Girobank |
| LS98 1FD | First Direct bank |
| M50 2BH | BBC Bridge House |
| M50 2QH | BBC Quay House |
| N1 9GU | The Guardian newspaper |
| N81 1ER | Electoral Reform Services |
| NE1 4ST | St James' Park Stadium, Newcastle United |
| NG80 1EH | Experian Embankment House |
| NG80 1LH | Experian Lambert House |
| NG80 1RH | Experian Riverleen House |
| NG80 1TH | Experian Talbot House |
| PH1 5RB | Royal Bank of Scotland Perth Chief Office |
| PH1 2SJ | St Johnstone Football Club |
| S2 4SU | Sheffield United Football Club |
| S6 1SW | Sheffield Wednesday Football Club |
| S14 7UP | The World Snooker Championships at the Crucible Theatre, Sheffield; 147 UP refers to a maximum lead in snooker |
| SA99 | Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency—All postcodes starting with SA99 are for the DVLA offices in the Morriston area of Swansea, the final part of the postcode relates to the specific office or department within the DVLA |
| SE1 0NE | One America Street, the London headquarters of architectural firm TP Bennett |
| SE1 8UJ | Union Jack Club |
| SM6 0HB | Homebase Limited |
| SN38 1NW | Nationwide Building Society |
| SR5 1SU | Stadium of Light, Sunderland AFC |
| SW1A 0AA | House of Commons |
| SW1A 0PW | House of Lords |
| SW1A 1AA | Buckingham Palace |
| SW1A 2AA | 10 Downing Street |
| SW1A 2AB | 11 Downing Street |
| SW1H 0TL | Transport for London |
| SW1P 3EU | European Commission and European Parliament office |
| SW1W 0DT | The Daily Telegraph newspaper |
| SW11 7US | Embassy of the United States, London |
| SW19 5AE | All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club |
| TW8 9GS | GlaxoSmithKline |
| W1A 1AA | BBC Broadcasting House |
| W1D 4FA | Betgenius, the former address of The Football Association |
| W1N 4DJ | BBC Radio 1 |
| W1T 1FB | |
| CO4 3SQ | University of Essex |
The postcode printed on Business Reply envelopes often ends with the letters BR.
Operation
Sorting
Postcodes are used to sort letters to their destination either manually, where sorters use labelled frames, or increasingly with letter-coding systems, where machines assist in sorting. A variation of automated sorting uses optical character recognition to read printed postcodes, best suited to mail that uses a standard layout and addressing format.A long string of "faced" letters is presented to a keyboard operator at a coding desk, who types the postcodes onto the envelopes in coloured phosphor dots. The associated machine uses the outward codes in these dots to direct bundles of letters into the correct bags for specific delivery offices. With a machine knowledge of the specific addresses handled by each postal walk at each office, the bundles can be further sorted using the dots of the inward sorting code so that each delivery round receives only its own letters. This feature depends upon whether it is cost effective to second-sort outward letters, and tends to be used only at main sorting offices where high volumes are handled.
When postcodes are incomplete or missing, the operator reads the post town name and inserts a code sufficient for outward sorting to the post town, where others can further direct it. The mail bags of letter bundles are sent by road, air or train, and eventually by road to the delivery office. At the delivery office the mail that is handled manually is inward sorted to the postal walk that will deliver it; it is then "set in", i.e. sorted into the walk order that allows the deliverer the most convenient progress in the round. The latter process is now being automated, as the roll-out of walk sequencing machines continues.
Integrated Mail Processors
Integrated Mail Processors read the postcode on the item and translate it into two phosphorus barcodes representing the inward and outward parts of the postcode, which the machines subsequently print and read to sort the mail to the correct outward postcode. Letters may also be sequentially sorted by a Compact Sequence Sorter reading the outward postcode in the order that a walking postman/woman will deliver, door to door. On such items the top phosphorous barcode is the inward part of the code, the bottom is the outward.IMPs can also read RM4SCC items, as used in Cleanmail, a different format to the above.
Mailsort and Walksort
A newer system of five-digit codes called Mailsort was designed for users who send "a minimum of 4,000 letter-sized items". It encodes the outward part of the postcode in a way that is useful for mail routing, so that a particular range of Mailsort codes goes on a particular plane or lorry. Mailsort users are supplied with a database to allow them to convert from postcodes to Mailsort codes and receive a discount if they deliver mail to the post office split up by Mailsort code. Users providing outgoing mail sorted by postcode receive no such incentive since postcode areas and districts are assigned using permanent mnemonics and do not therefore assist with grouping items together into operationally significant blocks. Walksort was discontinued in May 2012.Listings and availability
There are approximately 1.7 million postcodes in the United Kingdom, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man.Each postcode is divided by a space into two parts. As mentioned above, the first part starts with the postcode area and ends with the postcode district. The second part begins with a single digit, which indicates the postcode sector, and ends with the postcode unit.
Postcode areas are also divided into several post towns, which predate the introduction of postcodes, with the London post town uniquely covering more than one postcode area.
As of June 2016, there are 124 postcode areas, 2,987 postcode districts, 11,192 postcode sectors, and 1,500 post towns. Addresses receiving large volumes of mail are each assigned separate "large user" postcodes. But most postcodes are shared by several neighbouring properties, typically covering about 15 addresses.
Life-cycle of postcodes
There are also significant numbers of discontinued codes. Each month some 2,750 postcodes are created and 2,500 terminated.Postcode Address File (PAF)
The Address Management Unit of Royal Mail maintains an official database of UK postal addresses and postcodes in its Postcode Address File, which is made available under licence for a fee regulated by Ofcom. The PAF is commercially licenceable and is often incorporated in address management software packages. The capabilities of such packages allow most addresses to be constructed solely from the postcode and house number. By including the map references of postcodes in the address database, the postcode can be used to pinpoint a postcode area on a map. PAF is updated daily.On its website, Royal Mail publishes summary information about major changes to postcode sectors and postal localities. Individual postcodes or postal addresses can be found using Royal Mail's website, but this is limited to 50 free searches per user per day.
Code-Point Open
A complete list of all current Great Britain postcodes, known as Code-Point Open, has been made available online by Ordnance Survey. Under the government's OS OpenData initiative, it is available for re-use without charge under an attribution-only licence. The Code-Point Open list includes median coordinates for each postcode but excludes postcodes in Northern Ireland and the Crown dependencies. Unlike the PAF products provided by Royal Mail, the Code-Point Open list does not include postal address text.ONS Postcode Directory and National Statistics Postcode Lookup
The Office for National Statistics also produces postcode directories, under similar licence terms to the OS product. Both the ONSPD and NSPL contain Northern Ireland postcodes, with centroid coordinates in the OSI grid as opposed to the OSGB grid, although Northern Ireland postcodes are subject to a more restrictive licence permitting internal business use only. Postcodes for the Crown Dependences are also included, without co-ordinates. A further difference is that non-current postcodes and dates of introduction and withdrawal of postcodes are included.Other uses
While postcodes were introduced to expedite the delivery of mail, they are useful tools for other purposes, particularly because codes are very fine-grained and identify just a few addresses. Among these uses are:- With satellite navigation systems, to navigate to an address by street number and postcode
- By life insurance companies and pension funds to assess longevity for pricing and reserving
- By other types of insurance companies to assess premiums for motoring/business/domestic policy premiums
- To determine catchment areas for school places or doctors' surgeries
- Finding the nearest branch of an organisation to a given address. A computer program uses the postcodes of the target address and the branches to list the closest branches in order of distance as the crow flies. This can be used by companies to inform potential customers where to go, by job centres to find jobs for job-seekers, to alert people of town planning applications in their area, and a great many other applications.
For these and related reasons, postcodes in some areas have become indicators of social status. Some residents have campaigned to change their postcode to associate themselves with a more desirable area, to disassociate with a poorer area or to be associated with an area with a lower cost of living. In all these cases Royal Mail has said that there is "virtually no hope" of changing the postcode, referring to their policy of changing postcodes only to match changes in their operations.
Postcode areas rarely align with local government boundaries and a few straddle England's borders with Wales and Scotland. This has led to British Sky Broadcasting subscribers receiving the wrong BBC and ITV regions, and newly licensed radio amateurs being given incorrect call signs.