Postcodes: local authorities vs Royal Mail still arguing; want to sign a petition?
We’ve got intellectual property rows, petition and a question you might be able to answer this time.
This week’s Guardian returns, in Royal Mail fails to address database issue, to the vexed question of whether RM will let local authorities retain some intellectual property in the addresses they provide to it, as well as paying them for it – neither of which happens at present.
According to leaked letters we’ve seen, RM isn’t in favour. But the authorities are. Impasse. And as the article points out,
The saga provides a graphic example of an issue at the heart of Technology Guardian’s Free Our Data campaign – the bureaucracy and waste that ensue when state bodies treat vital data as an asset that must be made directly profitable.
The addresses go into the Postcode Address File, which unlike thousands of post offices
is profitable, making £1.58m on revenues of £18.36m in 2005-06 (Royal Mail’s postcode database reveals its profitable side, April 26). Councils in England and Wales spend about £2.5m a year on postcodes (paid to Ordnance Survey and commercial businesses, as well as Royal Mail).
After protests last year over price rises, Royal Mail said that it would consider “reasonable remuneration” to local authorities supplying data on new addresses. But negotiations on the terms have foundered over intellectual property rights.
This one could run and run – and already has.
This ludicrous position is a result of conflicting responsibilities placed on state-owned bodies. As a commercial (albeit state-owned) enterprise, Royal Mail has to make its assets pay, and that includes a national resource such as postcodes. Local authorities are being squeezed by council-tax caps and efficiency targets; selling data is thus a rare new source of income. The agency, meanwhile, wants to ensure the future of the National Land and Property Gazetteer, which it sees as a vital tool for modernisation. Its commercial contractor, Intelligent Addressing, is embroiled in a separate dispute with Ordnance Survey over addressing data.
The Free Our Data campaign proposes that all public bodies to free up their address databases, funded from central taxation. We’re not alone. A petition at petitions.pm.gov.uk urging the prime minister “to end the address dispute between local government, Royal Mail and Ordnance Survey” has 370 signatures.
In case you haven’t been to see (or sign) it, here’s the address mess petition. (It was started by Robert Kimber of Luton council; he’s been quoted here earlier.) We found it via the NLPG’s April e-zine – which is itself an interesting byway. The NLPG, of course, is the one which handles all the addresses (except for Birmingham’s. Why doesn’t Birmingham belong to the NLPG? Answers in a comment, please.)
- The following posts may be related...(the database guesses):
- Free our address data - or at least get them to stop charging each other: the petition (13 March 2007; score: 92.81%)
- In the Guardian: the mystery of the vanishing addresses (9 January 2009; score: 68.71%)
- A new No.10 petition: free PostZon (28 January 2010; score: 60.6%)
- Postcodes to be free? But which ones? (9 December 2009; score: 57.07%)
- Postcode charges threatens split between councils and Post Office (16 November 2006; score: 55.58%)
June 1st, 2007 at 1:46 pm
Reference Birmingham – they didnt sign up to the same general contract as the rest of the authorities, where we bulk bought maps, 3D information and gazetteer services.
June 1st, 2007 at 4:00 pm
A related development. The government today finally killed off the scheme to develop a single address database. Here’s the announcement:
Statement by Communities and Local Government on 1 June 2007.
The Department has been considering its role in the proposed National Spatial Address Infrastructure. During last year we consulted government departments on the core specification for addressing and continued to discuss this with Ordnance Survey and the Improvement and Development Agency (IDeA).
The Department has noted that there have continued to be improvements in the main address products produced by the Ordnance Survey and the IDeA and we expect this to continue. We also note that, although there are still challenges posed by addressing, local authorities are able to deliver efficiencies and government departments are able to deliver their business without the NSAI. On balance, considering the competing demands on departmental resources, we have concluded that we should not carry out any further work on the NSAI at this time.
In the meantime we will continue to encourage Ordnance Survey and IDeA to further their improvements, and would support new initiatives to improve addressing infrastructure that might arise through the Transformational Government agenda.
June 5th, 2007 at 7:16 am
Michael
Are you able to include a link to this announcement? I could not locate it on the http://www.communities.gov.uk website.
For info, there is another initiative (as a sub working party of the National Police Geographic Information Board) looking at the potential of a National Emergency Services Gazetteer. Whilst very early days, there is a definite need for the Emergency Services to have a gazetteer of addressable and possibly more importantly, non-addressable entries, to assist Emergency Services in rapid deployment of resources and back-office analysis of data. There are obviously a wide range of potential datasets that could be utilised and there are working groups set-up to determine what provides the most useable and accurate information.
I’ll post an update in the future to discuss any major licensing/IPR/accuracy issues that I’m sure we might face!