On Mon, 18 Feb 2008 11:26:04 +0000 LB blmaillist@googlemail.com allegedly wrote:
I am looking for a free of charge UK postcode database. It's for the purpose of the website I am programming currently, which is of non-commercial nature. The first part of the post code, the out code, would be enough to serve my purpose. I need to know names of towns corresponding to particular out codes and to be able to calculate the distances between post codes. Can you recommend anything reliable?
BTW. which out of chargeable resellers of such database would you be likely to choose considering that you don't want to spend a lot of money.
LB
I contacted a friend of mine who works for a company which produces postcoder software about your query. He gave me the answer below. Feel free to follow up if you choose. I have no commercial axe to grind.
Mick
-------------- Alan's reply-------
Mick,
Unfortunately Royal Mail have the copyright on anything with a postcode in it. If there is such a thing as a free UK postcode/town/grid ref database then I think RM would be very interested to know who was supplying it! We are even considering not charging for some of our software because the charge for the data swamps the price of the software (and we make a bit on reselling the data in our own optimised database).
There are several options: (1) Buy raw data - we can supply this in virtually any format but nobody seems to want it in anything other than CSV. I doubt anyone sells it for less than we do but I can't say for sure. Price varies depending on exactly what bits and pieces you want and frequency of updates etc. With raw data you can do virtually anything but on a DIY basis. If you have fairly one-dimensional needs then the DIY bit may be fairly easy.
(2) Buy an API product - this would allow full access to the RM data. We do one - the main part of the price is the RM data, which is a recurring charge. Price depends on type of usage and I don't know offhand what that is! The database is indexed on town (and just about everything else), so the outcode->town mapping would be no probs. Distance between postcodes can be done using simple pythagoras using grid refs for the 2 postcodes.
(3) Use a web service - for a web site this would provide per-click charging, i.e. for each address lookup there is a set charge. Price varies from about 5-10p per lookup to 1p depending on volumes etc. Unfortunately the outcode->town lookup could not be done economically using our web service - it's more geared to simple address checking.
(4) Use a combination of the above. e.g. Buy raw data, use it to get the outcode->town mapping. This particular data very rarely changes, so you could probably avoid updates for a few years. We can supply the outcode->town mapping pre-prepared, and this would probably be cheaper. The distance between bit can be done with a per-click charge using a web service.
(5) Wikepedia does have some Postcode area->Area Name mappings (this is not quite the same as "outcode", e.g. for Norwich the area is NR, but the outcodes are NR1, NR2, NR3 etc.). This might be sufficient for his purposes, but he would still need grid references for the distance calcs and as far as I know they are not freely available anywhere. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_postcode_areas_in_the_United_Kingdom
There's also Postcode area -> Post Town mappings at http://www.evoxfacilities.co.uk/evoxptn.html again doesn't have the full outcode.
So, I suggest he looks at the stuff at the links above to see if that meets part of his needs. Then contact our sales guys www.allies-computing.co.uk - they will help him figure out options, give him no obligation quotes and let him have free sample data and evaluate the web service for 21 days free of charge but with full technical support.
-------------end Alan's reply ----
Mick
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