About Us & Our Data

We are a small group of programmers who enjoy making information accessible to the public. To this end we decided to create a database of information related to data available for postcodes in the UK. We hope this information is accurate and useful to you!

How recent is your data?

Not all of the data on our site is current. This is because some data is only periodically made available by government agencies and other sources. The following list describes the freshness of the data available on this site.

Data Sources and Licences

We incorporate data from many sources on this website, the following statements detail those sources and the licences for the data.

What do all the fields in the postcode data mean?

Postcode Information

User Type

Large user postcodes: allocated to single addresses receiving at least 500 mail items per day (e.g. business addresses). Small user postcodes: collections of (usually) adjacent addresses. A single small user postcode may contain up to 100 addresses, but 15 is a more typical number

Date of Introduction

The most recent occurrence of the postcode’s date of introduction.

Date of Termination

If present, the most recent occurrence of the postcode’s date of termination.

Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD)

This is an indicator of the level of deprivation for an area. It combines multiple components with different strengths to give a single score. Income (22%), employment (22.5%), education (13.5%), health (13.5%), crime (9.3%), barriers to housing and services (9.3%) and living environment (9.3%). 1 indicates the most deprived areas.

National Park (NPARK)

National parcs are large areas of land that are protected by law for the benefit of the nation. Each postcode has a it's nearest National Park listed.

Police Force Area (PFA)

The UK is divided into 45 territorial police forces and this shows to which force a postcode belongs.

Governmental Information

Westminster Parliamentary Constituency

The Parliament of the United Kingdom currently has 650 parliamentary constituencies across the constituent countries (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland), each electing a single member of parliament (MP) to the House of Commons by the plurality (first past the post) voting system, ordinarily every five years.

County Electoral Division

The wards and electoral divisions in the United Kingdom are electoral districts at sub-national level represented by one or more councillors. The ward is the primary unit of English electoral geography for civil parishes and borough and district councils, electoral ward is the unit used by Welsh principal councils, while the electoral division is the unit used by English county councils and some unitary authorities. Each ward/division has an average electorate of about 5,500 people, but ward-population counts can vary substantially.

Electorial Ward

The ward is the primary unit of English electoral geography for civil parishes and borough and district councils, electoral ward is the unit used by Welsh principal councils. While the electoral division is the unit used by English county councils and some unitary authorities.

Local Authority District

The districts of England (also known as local authority districts or local government districts to distinguish from unofficial city districts) are a level of subnational division of England used for the purposes of local government.

Region / Government Office Region (formerly GOR)

The regions, formerly known as the government office regions (GOR), are the highest tier of sub-national division in England. Between 1994 and 2011, nine regions had officially devolved functions within government. While they no longer fulfil this role, they continue to be used for statistical and some administrative purposes.

European Electoral Region (EER)

The former European Parliament constituencies in the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom left the European Union on 31 January 2020. As a result, these constituencies no longer exist.

Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) - Primary and Secondary

LEPs are voluntary partnerships between local authorities and businesses set up in 2011 to help determine local economic priorities and lead economic growth and job creation within a local area.

Local enterprise partnership areas are allowed to overlap, so a local authority is permitted to be part of more than one local enterprise partnership. When this happens a secondary LEP is also shown.

Local Learning and Skills Council (LLSC) / Dept. of Children, Education, Lifelong Learning and Skills (DCELLS) / Enterprise Region (ER)

LLSC (England), DCELLS (Wales) or ER (Scotland).

The LSC was responsible for planning and funding further education (post-16 education and training other than higher education) in England. It was abolished in 2010 and replaced by the Skills Funding Agency and the Young People's Learning Agency.

Location Data

Country

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (UK), since 1922, comprises four constituent countries: England, Scotland, and Wales (which collectively make up Great Britain), as well as Northern Ireland (variously described as a country, province or region).

The Channel Islands and the Isle of Man are dependencies of the Crown and are not part of the UK.

County

The counties of England are areas used for different purposes, which include administrative, geographical, cultural and political demarcation. The term 'county' is defined in several ways and can apply to similar or the same areas used by each of these demarcation structures.

Latitude

The postcodes co-ordinates in degress latitude to six decimal places.

Longitude

The postcodes co-ordinates in degress longitude to six decimal places.

Grid Reference Easting and Northing

The OS grid reference Easting to 1 metre resolution

Grid Reference Positional Quality Indicator

Shows the status of the assigned grid reference.

ONS Statistical Regions

International Territorial Level (ITL formerly NUTS)

These areas are used as a standard by the Office for National Statistics to references subdivisions of the United Kingdom.

Travel to Work Area (TTWA)

A TTWA is a statistical tool used by UK Government agencies and local authorities, especially by the Department for Work and Pensions and Jobcentres, to indicate an area where the population would generally commute to a larger town, city or conurbation for the purposes of employment.

NHS Information

NHS England Region (NHS ER)

The NHS has seven regions who support local systems to provide more joined up and sustainable care for patients. Regional teams are responsible for the quality, financial and operational performance of all NHS organisations in their region

Primary Care Trust (PCT) / Care Trust Care Trust Plus (CT) / Local Health Board (LHB) / Community Health Partnership (CHP) / Local Commissioning Group (LCG) / Primary Healthcare Directorate (PHD)

Primary care trusts (PCTs) are the local statutory organisations in the English NHS responsible for improving public health, providing primary health care, and commissioning secondary and tertiary care services for populations of around 250 000 people.

PCT/CT areas in England, LHBs in Wales, CHPs in Scotland, LCG in Northern Ireland and PHD in the Isle of Man.

Cancer Alliance (CAL)

This is the Cancer Alliance code for a postcode. Cancer Alliances are not organisations, but geographical configurations/boundaries that bring together clinical and managerial leaders from different hospital trusts and other health and social care organisations. They then transform the diagnosis, treatment and care for cancer patients in that area. These partnerships enable care to be more effectively planned.

Former Strategic Health Authority (SHA) / Local Health Board (LHB) / Health Board (HB) / Health Authority (HA) / Health & Social Care Board (HSCB)

Strategic health authorities (SHA) were part of the structure of the National Health Service in England between 2002 and 2013. Each SHA was responsible for managing performance, enacting directives and implementing health policy as required by the Department of Health at a regional level.

Sustainability and Transformation Partnership (STP)

An STP is a planning framework for NHS services. STPs are intended to be a local blueprint for delivering the ambitions NHS bodies have for a transformed health service. These are set out in a document called Five Year Forward View.

Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) / Local Health Board (LHB) / Community Health Partnership (CHP) / Local Commissioning Group (LCG) / Primary Healthcare Directorate (PHD)

Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) commission most of the hospital and community NHS services in the local areas for which they are responsible. Commissioning involves deciding what services are needed for diverse local populations, and ensuring that they are provided.

These are called different things in different areas. CCG areas in England, LHBs in Wales, CHPs in Scotland, LCG in Northern Ireland and PHD in the Isle of Man. A

2011 Census Classifications

Output Area Classification (OAC11)

The 2001 Area Classification of output areas is used to group together geographic areas according to key characteristics common to the population in that grouping. These groupings are called clusters, and are derived using 2001 population census data.

Rural-Urban Classification (RU11IND)

The rural/urban definition and local authority classification were developed following the 2001 Census to produce a rural/urban view from government statistics.

Bulit-Up Area (BUA11) & Built-Up Area Sub-Division (BUASD11)

BUAs and BUASDs are a new geography, created as part of the 2011 Census outputs. This data provides information on the villages, towns and cities where people live, and allows comparisons between people living in built-up areas and those living elsewhere.

Census Workplace Zone (WZ11)

The Classification of Workplace Zones was initially produced by the University of Southampton for England and Wales following the creation of Workplace Zones for the 2011 Census. Workplace Zones are a small-area geography designed to contain a consistent number of workers allowing workplace statistics to be released at a more granular level.

Workplace Zones (WZs) are the only level of geography available as, unlike Output Areas, there is no hierarchical structure. There are 60,709 Workplace Zones in the UK.

Middle Layer Super Output Area (MSOA) / Intermediate Zone (IZ)

Super Output Areas are a geographic hierarchy designed to improve the reporting of small-area statistics.

The Middle Super Output Areas and Intermediate Zones area list contains 8,660 areas.

In the 2011 census an MSOA population exceeded 15,000 people or 6,000 households.

MSOA refers to England and Wales and IZ refers to Scotland

Lower Layer Super Output Area (LSOA) / Data Zone (DZ)

LSOA's are another geographic hierarchy designed to improve the reporting of statistics.

LSOA refers to England and Wales and DZ refers to Scotland

In the 2011 census an LSOA population exceeded 3,000 people or 1,200 households.

Census Output Area (OA) / Small Area (SA)

Output areas (OA) were created for Census data, specifically for the output of census estimates. The OA is the lowest geographical level at which census estimates are provided. OAs were introduced in Scotland at the 1981 Census and in all the countries of the UK at the 2001 Census.

OAs in GB and SAs in Northern Ireland, these were based on 2001 Census OAs, and they form the building bricks for defining higher level geographies.

In the 2011 census an OA population exceeded 625 people or 250 households.