The Problem With Code-Point Open From Ordnance Survey
Before I begin, let me just say that decision of Ordnance Survey to release a whole bunch of their data into the public domain is a massive leap in the right direction. The number of freely available datasets is vast, but what I’m most interested in is the Code-Point Open dataset.
Code-Point Open purports to be a dataset containing the geographical location of every postcode unit in the United Kingdom. Released into the public domain under a licence compatible with the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Licence, it sounds like exactly what we’ve all been waiting/campaigning for since literally forever. Postcode geodata without the Royal Mail PAF file price tag.
Too Good to be True?
Unfortunately yes. The Code-Point Open dataset is advertised with the bold statement that “Code-Point Open locates every postcode unit in the UK with precision”. Unfortunately this is simply untrue, and as much as it pains me to point this out, they’ve fallen at the first hurdle. The reason? Northern Ireland, The Channel Islands and The Isle of Man are all missing.
They immediately go on to state:
There are approximately 1.7 million postcode units in England, Scotland and Wales. Each postcode unit, such as KY12 8UP or PO14 2RS, contains an average of fifteen adjoining addresses.
Northern Ireland postcodes are not available with Code-Point Open.
The omission of Channel Islands and The Isle of Man is forgiveable. Technically they’re not a part of the UK even though they’re covered by Royal Mail’s postcode system. There is absolutely no way however that Code-Point Open can be deemed a full “UK” dataset with Northern Ireland (BT postcodes) missing.
For those of you for whom geography is not a strong-point, let me clarify (political correctness aside). England + Scotland + Wales == Great Britain. Great Britain + Northern Ireland == The United Kingdom.
Let’s take a look at how the Open offering stacks up against the commercial product
| Data element | Code-Point Open | Code-Point |
|---|---|---|
| Coverage | GB | UK |
| Cost | Free | £5,852.75* |
| Postcode unit | √ | √ |
| Eastings | √ | √ |
| Northings | √ | √ |
| Positional quality indicator | √ | √ |
| PO box indicator | √ | |
| Total number of delivery points | √ | |
| Delivery points | √ | |
| Domestic delivery points | √ | |
| Non-domestic delivery points | √ | |
| PO box delivery points | √ | |
| Matched address premises | √ | |
| Unmatched delivery points | √ | |
| NHS regional health authority code | √ | √ |
| NHS health authority code | √ | √ |
| Country code | √ | √ |
| Administrative county code | √ | √ |
| Administrative district code | √ | √ |
| Administrative ward code | √ | √ |
| Postcode type | √ |
* £5,852.75 is based on the 101+ terminal licence (which would be the licence required for web use and comes without a discount for non-commercial use)
In Conclusion
In my opinion Code-Point Open is little more than a token effort. Code-Point Open can be used to freely and legally locate postcodes in England, Scotland and Wales. Channel Islands (JE and GY), Isle of Man (IM) and Northern Ireland (BT) postcodes are all entirely missing from the dataset, and for this reason It is not a viable option for commercial use or any application where you don’t want to exclude a sizeable portion of the UK population (just over 2 million people according by my Wikipedia based caclulations)
May 29th, 2010 at 8:59 pm
To be fair to Code-Point Open, I hadn’t noticed it claiming UK coverage, and it is fairly clear that it doesn’t include Northern Ireland. But yes, this is poor. And with no reasonable explanation.
What’s particularly bizarre is that NI data is available from another government agency, the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency:
http://www.nisra.gov.uk/geography/default.asp6.htm
As far as I can make out, this can be used under the terms of the Click-use PSI licence. So I’ve done just that at http://www.geopostcode.org.uk
May 29th, 2010 at 10:05 pm
Yes to be fair, they do explain in several places that Code-Point Open only has GB coverage, it’s just the title of that product page that still claims that “Code-Point Open locates every postcode unit in the UK with precision”.
But yes, I noticed the NISRA data shortly after writing this post. I had previously given OS the benefit of the doubt in assuming that maybe the NI postcodes had some licensing issues, but apparently this is not the case.
It would appear that the omission of Northern Ireland from Code-Point Open is deliberate and intended to ensure the ongoing necessity of their expensive commercial Code-Point product.
Shame. Still, it looks as though every man and his dog are pumping out postcode location APIs lately so not to worry.
Interesting choice of proprietary formats by NISRA though. Which did you go for?
May 30th, 2010 at 9:08 pm
Ah, yes. I don’t often read page titles. That’s bad.
The core data in ESRI shapefiles is in dBase format, which is quite easily pulled into OpenOffice Calc and manipulated further.
May 30th, 2010 at 9:40 pm
Ah yes. Thanks for the tip. I hadn’t noticed it was just a dBase file.
May 30th, 2010 at 10:19 pm
[...] In April 2010 Ordnance Survey released The Code-Point Open dataset under a licence compatible with the Creative Commons Attribution Licence. The dataset locates, by OSGB grid reference every postcode unit in England, Scotland and Wales. Northern Ireland is missing. You can read more about the limitations of the Code-Point Open dataset in my previous post [...]
July 12th, 2010 at 5:34 pm
I can work out some of the Code point column headings. Is anyone aware of any metadata to inform us of what the other column headings are for?
July 22nd, 2010 at 3:29 pm
Missing NI may simply be because the Ordance Survey map England, Wales and Scotland. There is different group who map Ireland, http://www.osi.ie
August 15th, 2010 at 11:46 pm
Good news even if partial. its better than nothing. So does this mean its the end of Experian QuickAddress, MapInfo, gazetteer, nlpg.org and aligned assets??
these monolithic companies make addressing work complex for nothing. Hope all these planning departments will realize they dont have to pay them the big sums anymore. and Rather support the open data movement instead
Regards