Free Our Data: the blog

A Guardian Technology campaign for free public access to data about the UK and its citizens

« Could free data have helped the Rural Payments Agency?
Revealed: how profitable Royal Mail’s Postcode Address File (PAF) really is »

Postcomm makes recommendations on future of Postcode Address File: it should make a profit

Postcomm, the postal regulator, has come up with its recommendations on what should happen with the Postcode Address File (PAF) – that valuable item owned by the Post Office/Royal Mail.

Postcomm calls them “new safeguards for the future management of the postcode and address data contained in Royal Mail’s Postcode Address File”, which you can see at the Postcomm announcement on PAF:

The four key issues covered in today’s document – “Royal Mail’s future management of PAF” (pdf, 604KB)– are:

  • The definition of PAF – what information should Royal Mail be obliged to supply? Postcomm considers that ‘PAF data’ is not only made up of postcode details, but also includes other information needed to allow users to identify specific addresses.

  • The creation of an advisory board. Royal Mail has agreed to set up an advisory board to represent the views of PAF users, and has already started the recruitment process for the board’s independent chairman.

  • Ringfencing of PAF. As competition develops in the mail market – and also with other suppliers of similar address data – it is crucial that Royal Mail ringfences PAF from its other activities, in order to avoid potential conflicts of interest.

  • Profits. There is increasing demand for PAF data from a wide range of organisations, which rely very heavily on the information it provides. This puts Royal Mail in a very powerful position where setting prices is concerned. Although PAF does not fall within the ‘price control’ that Postcomm uses to set a pricing and service quality framework for Royal Mail, the company has agreed to aim for an operating profit margin in the range of 8-10%. If profits exceed this range, the excess would be either returned to customers or reinvested in PAF.

    • The linked PDF is a sprightly 92 pages, and I’m working my way through it. The questions that spring to mind for me are: why 8-10%? I suppose that’s a typical operating profit in the private sector – but it’s interesting that there’s not been the application of, say, “return on capital employed” (used in trading funds) which would give a much lower price for PAF.

    Secondly, how can PAF truly be ringfenced?

    We’re interested to hear your views – particularly if you’ve managed to reach page 92 first.

    This entry was posted on Thursday, April 19th, 2007 at 6:50 am and is filed under Financial analysis, Government reports, Post Office. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

    5 Responses to “Postcomm makes recommendations on future of Postcode Address File: it should make a profit”

    1. exLA Custodian Says:
      April 20th, 2007 at 9:00 pm

      It’s interesting that this has been published a few weeks after RM threw their toys out of the pram and withdrew from central negotiations with the Local Government representatives over paying for the crucial new and not yet built property data that LAs pass (currently for free) to RM.

      The plan was to pass RM a sub-set of the National Land and Property Gazetteer containing these details, but for a price.

      RM have walked away from the talks and now are planning to approach each LA on their own – a divide and conquer technique.

      They fear (I guess) that once LA data is mixed with PAF, that the LAs will want a chunk of the cash that PAF generates.

      This nonsence must stop – see http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/freeaddresses/#detail

    2. David Southwell Says:
      April 26th, 2007 at 3:07 pm

      The argument about PAF is similar to the arguments about the right to roam.

      Why is this government owned data not available under the freedom of information act?

      Can we ask for the information provided by the LA’s to the Royal mail under the freedom of information act?

      I cannot agree that public data “should make a profit” for RM or anyone else. How can there be any future open competition for postal and parcel delivery services if RM are allowed to retain this government information for profit?

      David

    3. Charles Arthur Says:
      April 26th, 2007 at 8:30 pm

      @David: you probably can get the PAF under FOI, but you’d be banned from passing it on to anyone. Crown Copyright, you know. Yes, it’s daft.

      There wouldn’t be much use in getting what the LAs tell RM – it’s just address data without a postcode. The PAF division inside RM then sprinkles pixie dust over it to put a postcode on, and tell the Ordnance Survey, which determines “where” the postcode “is”.

      Good point about the problem for rival services if RM retains the division that does postcodes. Arguments about postal services lie outside this campaign, of course – and are much more complicated, I think.

    4. Adrian Marsden Says:
      April 27th, 2007 at 8:45 am

      Charles – sorry, but you are a bit wrong on the new and not yet built data – true the postcode comes from RM, but by the time these data are in the NLPG it is fully geo-coded – RM or anyone else getting NLPG data are getting full positional addresses with postcodes

      Adrian

    5. steved Says:
      May 8th, 2007 at 2:40 pm

      I agree with Adrian here:

      In most cases the postcode appears in the NLPG before it appears on PAF. The LA usually contacts Royal Mail prior to confirmation of address to obtain the postcode. Once this is done the Street Naming and numbering confirmations are sent out to consultees (including Royal Mail). Until Royal Mail receive this, there is no address to put into PAF. This is currently done via the post because Royal Mail will not except them digitally. It then takes Royal Mail upto 14 days from receipt to get the address added to PAF, and upto 12 months for it to appear in OS value added products.

      Alongside this the LLPG custodian will scan the development plan and geocode the new addresses. Therefore when the address is added to the NLPG it will contain a geocode, and often a postcode. OS are simply duplicating the process when creating the addresses in Addresspoint/Address Layer 2.

    Leave a Reply