OSM UK Address & Postcode Mapping
For background on how postcodes work in the UK, please
see Wikipedia:
Postcodes in the United Kingdom. For details of the structure of
UK addresses see the "Programmers' Guide" on Royal
Mail's Powered
by PAF website.
Tools and Reports
- OSM Postcode Mapping Stats
- Details of the number of postcode units mapped in each postal area and district.
- OSM Street Name Warnings
- Possible errors in addr:street and names
of associatedStreet relations for OSM objects with postcodes.
- Post Town Warnings
- Possible errors in the Post Town (addr:city) tagging of
OSM objects with postcodes.
- OSM Postcode Value Errors
- List of erroneous addr:postcode values found in
OpenStreetMap data for the UK.
- OSM Overfull Postcode Units
- List of postcodes where there are more than 100 OSM objects objects
with the same postcode. This generally shouldn't happen as each
postcode unit contains at most 100 delivery points.
- OSM Postcode Offsets (Location Discrepancies)
- List of OSM objects where there is a discrepancy between the
object's location and the centroid of its addr:postcode
from Code-Point Open.
- UPRN Locations (beta)
- Map showing the locations assigned to each of the 38 million
Unique Property Reference Numbers in Great Britain, as released in
the new
OS
Open UPRN dataset.
- History of OSM Postcode Progress
- Various graphs showing the numbers of GB postcodes and postcode
errors in OSM over time.
- Address Tag (addr:*) Usage
Report
- Tables showing the current number of uses of
different addr:* tags in Great Britain.
Resources for Postcode Mapping
- Code-Point Open
- Official UK data from Ordnance survey, available for re-use under
the Open Government Licence v3 (hence suitable for use in
OSM). Includes all postcodes, but only includes a single centroid
location for each unit. The centroids are usually calculated by
taking the arithmetical mean of the coordinates of each address
point with that postcode, and then snapping this to the nearest
address point with that postcode. But things are actually slightly
more complicated than this —
see Algorithm
for Computing Postcode Centroids in Code-Point Open.
- National Statistics Postcode Lookup & ONS Postcode Directory
- Two Open Data products from the Office for National
Statistics. They contain a list of postcodes with the Code-Point
Open Centroids, and then relate the postcode units to other
statistical geographies. In terms of OSM use, there are a couple of
advantages over Code-Point Open: old postcode units are also
included, along with fields for user type date of introduction and
date of termination. ONS
has confirmed
that this additional information can all be used under the Open
Government Licence.
- Ragged Red: Displaying
Code-point postcode centroids
- Details of tiles displaying Code-Point Open Centroids, that can be
loaded in OSM editors, or shown on the OS Compare Map.
- Food
Hygiene Open Data OpenStreetMap Tool
- Tool for comparing mapping of food outlets with official hygiene
rating data. A useful source of addresses and for flagging when
previously mapped premises have closed.
- New Postcodes
- Map showing newly created postcodes. Useful in well-mapped areas,
where people want to check the new developments are being added to OSM.
- British Postcodes on OpenStreetMap
- Blog post from 2013.
- Overpass Turbo Queries
- OSM
Inspector: Addresses
- Geofabrik's tool to identify objects with address tags, and flag
potential issues.