Inclusion of postcodes in the ONSUD and NSUL products

Dyddiad y datganiad:
23 December 2024

FOI reference: FOI-2024-2429 

You asked

The ONS Geography team maintains two address products, the ONS UPRN Directory (ONSUD) and the National Statistics UPRN Lookup (NSUL). An updated release of each product is published every six weeks on ONS's Open Geography Portal at  https://geoportal.statistics.gov.uk/.

These products are open data. Each contains a list of Unique Property Reference Numbers (UPRNs) matched to a range of names and codes related to statutory administrative, electoral, health and other statistical geographies.

I would like to request some information that ONS may hold about the inclusion of postcodes in the ONSUD and NSUL products.

My understanding, from public documentation, is that postcodes for each UPRN have been included in ONSUD and NSUL since the October 2020 releases, and that the postcodes are taken directly from Ordnance Survey's AddressBase where that postcode is included in the OS Code-Point Open product. Postcodes not present in Code-Point Open are redacted under the terms of an agreement between ONS and Ordnance Survey.

Please provide the following information: 

  1. The currently in effect version of any agreement between ONS and Ordnance Survey that relates to the inclusion or use of postcodes in ONS address products, or the production of that postcode data. I don't know what form this agreement might take - it might be a legally binding licensing agreement, or it might be a non-binding memorandum or in correspondence. The agreement might refer more generally to use of AddressBase data - if so, please consider that to be within scope of my information request provided that the AddressBase data includes postcodes. 

  2. Any unpublished guidance or technical documentation that relates to the inclusion or use of postcodes in ONS address products. 

  3. Any other information that explains the currency of the postcode data included in ONS address products. (I note that the latest releases of ONSUD and NSUL contain postcodes as included on the May 2023 version of Code-Point Open, and am interested to understand why the postcode data is so old.)

We said

Thank you for your request. 

The ONS Geography team produces and publishes National Statistics UPRN products supporting the GSS Geography Policy for the production of statistics; specifically: 

  • the ONS UPRN Directory (ONSUD)  

  • the National Statistics UPRN Lookup (NSUL). 

These are not address products as described in your request.  

Both of those products are updated every six weeks and can be found on the Open Geography Portal (https://geoportal.statistics.gov.uk/)  under the UPRNs tab. 

With regards to the inclusion of the postcode attribution in the products, your understanding is correct. 

  1. There is no formal agreement with regards to the inclusion or use of postcodes within ONS' UPRN products. The reasons for this are:  

  • Whilst the UPRNs used are derived from AddressBase® data, ONS publish the UPRNs with no other attributes, in line with the UPRN open identifiers policy.  

  • The postcodes allocated to the UPRN, whilst derived from AddressBase®, are checked against the OS Code-Point Open (Postcode) product to ensure only open postcodes are published. Any postcode attributed that is not appearing in Code-Point Open is deleted, thus complying with open data licencing. 

Postcode Licencing: 

  1. ONS publishes extensive guidance and technical documentations on our Open Geography Portal for each product and for each epoch release.  

There are user guides which highlight licencing and attribution metadata and where you will find information on licences (Section 3 p 6) and postcode attribution (see table on p16).  

Here are links to the user guides for the latest two UPRN products:  

We do not currently have unpublished guidance or technical documentation which relates to the inclusion of the postcodes specifically, only working knowledge by individuals within the team.

  1. Regarding your request about the currency of the postcode data: 

We don't have further information which explains the currency of the postcode data included in the ONS UPRN products, other than the statement in the NSUL and ONSUD user guides you refer to in your request: "The [NSUL or ONSUD] contains postcodes as included on the May 2023 version of Code-Point Open." 

We usually thrive to ensure that the postcode information is as current as possible, using the latest OS AddressBase and Code-Point Open product releases to update our products. Unfortunately, due to a current resourcing shortage, the ONS Geography team has not been able to maintain that currency. We always ensure however that we clearly state which source of data we use to avoid any confusion, which you can find in section 4 page 4 of both NSUL and ONSUD November 2024 user guides (linked above)  

We can confirm that the November 2024 version of Code-Point Open will be used in the first UPRN directories issued in 2025. 

We apologise for any inconvenience caused and we would encourage you in future to contact our customer service at ONS.Geography@ons.gov.uk for any specific technical questions, which the team will be happy to assist you with.

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