Country information - Great Britain

General information for Great Britain, including naming conventions used and specific dataset characteristics.

  • Sources: The British dataset is compiled from publicly available sources.
  • Coverage: The country code GB stands for the United Kingdom; the address data covers England.
  • Update frequency: Monthly. The API is refreshed during the month.
  • British postcodes are alphanumeric: an outward code of 2 to 4 characters and an inward code of 3 characters, separated by a space. In B1 2JB, a postcode in Birmingham city centre, the outward code B1 names the postcode area B and the district B1. The inward code 2JB narrows it down to the sector B1 2 and the unit B1 2JB. A unit postcode typically covers around 15 addresses.

Details on data:

  • Addresses include the fields street, streetNumber, postalCode, settlement and district, plus buildingName where the source names the building.
  • Postcodes are accepted in upper or lower case, with or without the space, and returned with the space.
  • House numbers are returned as the source labels them, including complete ranges such as 81-87.
  • The locator (/v2/locator/gb) ranks outward codes such as B11 or SW1A, each placed at the mean coordinates of its unit postcodes. The range call (/v2/range/gb) returns full postcodes.