ALL 1,841,177 UK POSTCODES FREE'D?

ALL 1,841,177 UK POSTCODES FREE'D?




Example of UK Individual Postcodes (density)
image source:
http://da.vidnicholson.com/2006/12/uk-postcode-coverage-map.html

According to the Guardian:

"Wikileaks is hosting what it says is a copy of the entire UK postcode list, last updated on July 8 2009, that contains "all 1,841,177 UK post codes together with lattitude [sic] and longitude, grid references, county, district, ward, NHS codes and regions, Ordnance Survey reference, and date of introduction. The database ... is over 100,000 pages in size."

The 230MB file, zipped to 20MB, does indeed contain a huge slew of postcodes in comma-separated form, with those details as headers for each column.

Oh my. We have no idea who has leaked this, but it is the gateway to some valuable information: Royal Mail, as we ascertained previously in the Free Our Data campaign, sells the Postcode Address File (aka PAF) for a considerable sum, and makes a good profit on it: in August 2007 the postal regulator Postcomm revealed that PAF operations made a profit of £1.58m on revenues of £18.36m, all but £4m from resellers."

Data seems to be

Postzon™

"links Postcodes and addresses to geographical data"

http://www.royalmail.com/portal/rm/jump2?mediaId=400088&catId=400084

so there is a licence cost:

System licence £1,000
Multi-system licence £3,000
Corporate licence £25,000

Full story:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2009/sep/16/wikileaks-postcode-file-free-data

More information on UK Postcodes

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postcodes_in_the_United_Kingdom

If you want a non-derived Royal Mail/Ordnance Survey and Free Postcodes without an annual licence.

http://www.freethepostcode.org/currentlist