Every morning I visit Hacker News, which is an aggregator of tech stories. Incredibily this article was #1. You can see the discussion around this here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41326604
Post codes primarily serve one purpose - to allow Royal Mail to efficiently deliver post. If the government was to own it then the government is going to need to provide all sorts of service levels, liability cover to ensure Royal Mail can continue to operate. Or we'll get an odd situation where the Royal Mail dataset and government one diverges over time...
The only way I can see this sensibly working is the Royal Mail continues to own and maintain the data and is obliged to provide the data for free / minimal cost.
Ok since we’re talking about addresses, here’s my personal beef that I’m hoping the PAF nerds can help me fix. I live in St Leonards On Sea, but often it is auto corrected on autofill addresses to “Saint Leonards on Sea”. This irks me (which tells you everything you need to know about my awful personality). My inexact observation is it’s an American datafile (did I use that word right) since it doesn’t happen in every case, especially not on UK websites. Americans might not think there’s a difference, but I DO GODDAMN.
This article has actually made me feel Royal Mail should own the PAF given how much hard work and literal manual postman hours have gone into painstakingly creating their database. It’s the one bit of IP they can hold on to as deliveries get more competitive and they slowly collapse. If you have done (or can do) any work to estimate the value to the country that could be created through freeing the PAF then at least we’d have an idea of what we should offer Royal Mail to sell it back to the public. Have you got those numbers?
I recently had to correct some errors in the PAF and it all needed doing by the local council as when the addresses were officially created (also by the council) they made some mistakes. So it seems actually councils are doing much of the update and maintenance work already. It seems nuts that this effort goes into a proprietary database.
This blog post also makes interesting reading: https://www.owenboswarva.com/blog/post-addr6.htm , together with a whole swathe of discussions on the OpenStreetMap groups about alternative, less-encumbered ways to access Postcode data. There is a "nearly good enough" route via the Government Office for National Statistics "Open Geography Portal" which offers a file linking Postcodes with UPRNs (Unique Property Reference Numbers) and high-resolution OS Grid Reference, used in turn by sites like https://uprn.uk . Part of the problem is that UK delivery addresses are almost uniquely complex and variable, as anyone grappling with Scottish tenement blocks, uniquely numbered Terraces within a parent Street etc. will testify. In short - it's a mess, and although neccessary opening up the PAF isn't in itself sufficient!
It's an interesting challenge. I know a guy who sells a set of code plugin and database access that companies buy to do address look-ups on websites. I'll ask where their database pulls from. It's 3p a lookup or something "crazy", but far cheaper for a few thousand sales a year than the £6k upfront!
Or the govt mandates a new post-code system that uses something akin to grid references / latlong but in an easier to digest format (like what 3 words but free from licensing). Will take a while to become the standard, but this would be more accurate and more flexible than existing weird postcodes.
This already exists - google plus codes which are free and open. You can see them on google maps. It also has the benefit that the system works globally.
You could say that, but it would destroy a lot of value for the buyer and may make a sale untenable. It all boils down to how much we actually think the PAF is worth now, and how much value it will derive for society once unleashed. Between those two numbers is its price.
Every morning I visit Hacker News, which is an aggregator of tech stories. Incredibily this article was #1. You can see the discussion around this here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41326604
fantastic piece. thank you for writing!
Cheers!
Post codes primarily serve one purpose - to allow Royal Mail to efficiently deliver post. If the government was to own it then the government is going to need to provide all sorts of service levels, liability cover to ensure Royal Mail can continue to operate. Or we'll get an odd situation where the Royal Mail dataset and government one diverges over time...
The only way I can see this sensibly working is the Royal Mail continues to own and maintain the data and is obliged to provide the data for free / minimal cost.
Ok since we’re talking about addresses, here’s my personal beef that I’m hoping the PAF nerds can help me fix. I live in St Leonards On Sea, but often it is auto corrected on autofill addresses to “Saint Leonards on Sea”. This irks me (which tells you everything you need to know about my awful personality). My inexact observation is it’s an American datafile (did I use that word right) since it doesn’t happen in every case, especially not on UK websites. Americans might not think there’s a difference, but I DO GODDAMN.
Someone save me from myself
You’re missing an arrow from NAG to PAF in your flow diagram.
More proof of just how stupid privatisation is. As if proof were needed.
Great read.
Have you considered the Valuation Office Agency, an arm of HMRC?
They maintain their own address database used to store current and historic property valuations.
Everything that pays "tax" is included, commercial and residential properties.
You can see small subsets of this data if you use their website to check your council tax band.
An FoI may liberate some of this data.
This article has actually made me feel Royal Mail should own the PAF given how much hard work and literal manual postman hours have gone into painstakingly creating their database. It’s the one bit of IP they can hold on to as deliveries get more competitive and they slowly collapse. If you have done (or can do) any work to estimate the value to the country that could be created through freeing the PAF then at least we’d have an idea of what we should offer Royal Mail to sell it back to the public. Have you got those numbers?
I recently had to correct some errors in the PAF and it all needed doing by the local council as when the addresses were officially created (also by the council) they made some mistakes. So it seems actually councils are doing much of the update and maintenance work already. It seems nuts that this effort goes into a proprietary database.
This blog post also makes interesting reading: https://www.owenboswarva.com/blog/post-addr6.htm , together with a whole swathe of discussions on the OpenStreetMap groups about alternative, less-encumbered ways to access Postcode data. There is a "nearly good enough" route via the Government Office for National Statistics "Open Geography Portal" which offers a file linking Postcodes with UPRNs (Unique Property Reference Numbers) and high-resolution OS Grid Reference, used in turn by sites like https://uprn.uk . Part of the problem is that UK delivery addresses are almost uniquely complex and variable, as anyone grappling with Scottish tenement blocks, uniquely numbered Terraces within a parent Street etc. will testify. In short - it's a mess, and although neccessary opening up the PAF isn't in itself sufficient!
Ordnance Survey, not ordinance.
It's an interesting challenge. I know a guy who sells a set of code plugin and database access that companies buy to do address look-ups on websites. I'll ask where their database pulls from. It's 3p a lookup or something "crazy", but far cheaper for a few thousand sales a year than the £6k upfront!
Ok, I checked, and the guy had a license then resells the data from the Royal Mail database.
I'm surprised they didn't look at Land Registry data too, but the whole idea of recreating the PAF seems entirely ludicrous.
Or the govt mandates a new post-code system that uses something akin to grid references / latlong but in an easier to digest format (like what 3 words but free from licensing). Will take a while to become the standard, but this would be more accurate and more flexible than existing weird postcodes.
This already exists - google plus codes which are free and open. You can see them on google maps. It also has the benefit that the system works globally.
yeah but w3w though
So we need primary legislation for the government to take the database back?
Not necessarily but possibly - there’s various models for how PAF liberation could work:
https://takes.jamesomalley.co.uk/p/heres-the-plan-to-actually-liberate
Not quite - you could say that selling the PAF file to the Government was a requirement for the current desired takeover to take place..
You could say that, but it would destroy a lot of value for the buyer and may make a sale untenable. It all boils down to how much we actually think the PAF is worth now, and how much value it will derive for society once unleashed. Between those two numbers is its price.
Yeah but the PAF is probably their biggest long lived asset. Buyers will be less interested if they have to hand it over as a condition of the sale.