A significant UK think-tanking is backing the campaign to liberate the Postcode Address File

The pressure is on the government to abolish the Innovation Tax

Quick reminder #1: Don’t forget to check out my big essay this week – an epic on how a “British DOGE” is rebuilding the state.

---

Quick reminder #2: On March 25th, I’ll be speaking to the excellent Anya Martin about housing politics and how the YIMBY movement has been so damn effective over the last few years. You can find out more details and buy tickets here.

---

Hey everyone!

I just wanted to drop you a quick note to promote a new paper that has been published by UKDayOne, a think-tank that focuses on the practical steps in making policy.

What’s this new paper about? It’s making the case that we should make the UK’s geospatial data fit for the future – and that, of course, means we should liberate the Postcode Address File (PAF). I might have mentioned the issue before.

(If you’re new to the PAF, you can just read this, this, this, and maybe this to catch up on some of the major milestones so far – one day I will combine everything PAF related into one canonical article, but today is not that day.)

Anyway, the new paper is coauthored by my friends Peter Wells and Anna Powell-Smith, who are the biggest brains currently fighting for PAF liberation, and it was edited by Tym Syrytczyk. My name is also on the paper, which is a very nice ego-trip for me, but it is entirely their work – my only contribution has been to coin the phrase “innovation tax”.

Here’s a flavour:

Recognising the importance of geospatial data, the UN classifies it as critical national infrastructure essential to achieving Sustainable Development Goals. The EU has designated geospatial data as high-value, requiring member states to provide it for free and estimating that such policies will generate up to €2 billion annually in economic growth by 2028. Countries such as the Netherlands, Denmark, and France have already embraced this approach, removing financial and administrative barriers to access the data. The Dutch government, through its Digital Government Act of 2023, has committed to making high-value datasets such as address, mapping, and land parcel data openly available, benefiting businesses, public services, and researchers alike.

The UK Imposes an Innovation Tax on Geospatial Data

The UK, however, has taken a different path. Instead of treating geospatial data as a public good, it has commercialised access, limiting its availability and slowing innovation. The privatisation of publicly collected data has resulted in profit-seeking entities controlling key datasets, imposing high costs and licensing restrictions that prevent efficient use. In a striking paradox, taxpayers both fund the original data collection and subsidize these struggling private firms, while simultaneously being denied free access to the very data they helped create.

It then goes on to list the practical steps the government can take to get it done – think, almost literally the instructions that Keir Starmer needs to give on the phone to make it happen.

So if you’re curious, and would like to read more, be sure to go and check it out on the UKDayOne website. And if you know any friendly government ministers, why not forward the paper on?

I’ll be back later this week with a link round-up as usual, and I’m already hard at work on next week’s big essay. Though I can’t promise it will be quite as long as this week’s was.

James