Postcodes to be free? But which ones?
The BBC has a piece saying that “postcodes” will be free from 2010:
Currently organisations that want access to datasets that tie postcodes to physical locations cannot do so without incurring a charge.
Following a brief consultation, the postcode information is set to be freed in April 2010.
….
The dataset that is likely to be freed is that which ties postcodes to geographic locations. Many more commercial organisations use the Postcode Address File (PAF) that ties post codes to addresses. Currently access to either data set incurs a charge.
In October 2009 the Royal Mail took legal action that cut off the access many websites had to PAF data.
(You might remember that one.)(
Sites that used the postcode feed included Job Centre Pro Plus, HealthWare (locates nearby pharmacies and hospitals), Planning alerts.com (monitors planning applications), Straight Choice (finds out who sent political leaflets).
That’s quickly contradicted however by the email that came around from the Royal Mail, noted by Steve Feldman, coming from Giles Finnemore, Head of Marketing at the Address Management Unit of the Royal Mail:
You may be aware of a story on the BBC website today that Government is planning to give anyone free access to postcode data.
Access to postcodes is already, and will continue to be, free to every citizen via www.royalmail.com/postcodes4free.
(Which is a nonsense. It’s true, but it’s also nonsensical, because the postcodes4free page requires registration and will only give you a limited number of postcode lookups in a 24-hour period. Which, if you think about it, is absurd: why does the Royal Mail want to make it difficult to address letters? You need to have an address list if you want to generate postcodes; if you didn’t have the postcodes, where did you get the addresses?)
For the avoidance of doubt PAF(r), the Postcode Address File, remains the intellectual property of Royal Mail and is supplied and used under licence. The new and recently published licences come into effect from April 2010. There are no plans for that to change.
Maintaining a world class postal address file requires significant ongoing investment and it is right that organisations who obtain value from using the file pay to do so.
We are aware of no plans for Government to pay Royal Mail for businesses and organisations to use our address file.
And it’s also contradicted by the Royal Mail’s press release page, which at present (December 9) has nothing about postcodes.
However, it may well be that the PostZon file – or more precisely, the long/lat lookups for every postcode – will be available for free next April.
- The following posts may be related...(the database guesses):
- In the Guardian: people are doing it for themselves (2 November 2006; score: 24.28%)
- Naughty, very naughty: Ernest Marples frees the postcodes (11 July 2009; score: 23.86%)
- In the Guardian: what happens to the Postcode Address File in a Royal Mail split ownership? (9 March 2009; score: 19.56%)
- Postcodes: local authorities vs Royal Mail still arguing; want to sign a petition? (24 May 2007; score: 14.82%)
- Royal Mail threat likely to close ernestmarples.org (5 October 2009; score: 11.96%)
December 9th, 2009 at 10:17 pm
I’ve seen it stated elsewhere that it’s Postzon, though I don’t know about its sources. It would make sense, though.
However, it’s useless for the vast majority of postcode-consuming applications, which revolve around trying to make make sure that an address is correct before despatching something into the postal system.
Postzon has its uses, certainly, but they pale into insignificance when compared to the subset of the PAF that most of us pay to or want to make use of (noting that there’s plenty which makes up the PAF that most people don’t care one jot about).
December 9th, 2009 at 10:18 pm
Er, also, excuse the apparent contradictions in my hastily-written comment. YKWIM.
December 9th, 2009 at 11:31 pm
Presumably, since the consultation is going to be with the OS, it’ll be their Code-Point dataset that gets released, rather than Postzon.
(Disclaimer: I’ve never used Postzon. For all I know they’re actually identical!)
December 10th, 2009 at 10:30 am
Well postcode->coordinates would be useful for some applications, e.g. GPS navigation, dating websites, etc. And coupled with OpenStreetMap or perhaps even Google Maps you could build a rough address database.
December 10th, 2009 at 12:16 pm
So can the OS make Code-Point free even if they want to? According to http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/products/codepoint/techinfo.html:
The source of the postcodes is the Royal Mail Group PAF® data, which
has been continuously updated since 1974, and Postzon® data from
1999.
Code-Point is produced quarterly using updates from the Gridlink®
dataset and Ordnance Survey field survey updates, creating the
National Grid references (and associated attribution) for each
postcode centroid in Code-Point to a resolution of 1 metre.
So who owns the Gridlink dataset?
December 14th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
@Tim
Why create yet another cobbled together (rough) address set when investing in the NLPG process has given the country what it needs. It just needs to be licensed and shared more effectively!
December 23rd, 2009 at 2:56 pm
Sure enough, http://www.communities.gov.uk/documents/corporate/pdf/1415413.pdf says:
“Although Code-Point® is being considered for release it should be noted that there are additional rights holders for the product in addition to Ordnance Survey and it will be necessary to obtain agreement from these third parties before the product can be made freely available.”
I wonder what the Royal Mail will say.
December 24th, 2009 at 12:58 am
I posted an article over at OKF covering this same ground, just before I read this one.
http://blog.okfn.org/2009/12/23/some-facts-about-uk-postcodes/
This was prompted by media coverage of how “the Royal Mail owns the postcode datasets” and claiming this as taxpayer subsidy of Google. There were figures for cost of updates that looked like they came from the Royal Mail; and no mention of Gridlink at all.