Knowledge Base Key data ingredients for UK postcode lookup
The data behind your user interface is vital to user experience
When adding UK postcode lookup or address validation to an online form, it’s easy to concentrate on how the UI elements will look and forget about the data that powers the search.
The data powering address searches can make the difference between your users finding their address in one quick search, or not being able to find their address at all.
If you’re reviewing and comparing different postcode lookup APIs, there are some other datasets that you should be aware of:
1. Royal Mail PAF (refreshed daily)
In the UK the best source of address data is the Postcode Address File (PAF) from Royal Mail; a massive data file containing 30 million residential and commercial addresses in the UK.
PAF is far from static with changes being made daily, based on property and business owners informing Royal Mail directly or the postmen and women delivering the mail making note of changes.
Altogether these changes can total thousands per day, including new houses being added, demolished buildings being removed and organisation names being updated when businesses move premises.
Learn more about the PAF dataset >
2. Multiple Residence
Multiple Residence is a dataset from Royal Mail of around 795,000 addresses mainly comprised of flats that exist behind a shared letterbox. In PAF these would show up as one delivery point, however there might be 50 addresses behind that delivery point.
That’s a lot of addresses to overlook - without them you might be missing a vital part of the address to ensure a package is delivered to the correct apartment, or your customers will have to manually edit their address to add this in, risking mistakes, inconsistencies, and customer frustration.
Learn more about Multiple Residence >
3. BFPO addresses
The British Forces Post Office (BFPO) is a separate postal service for those serving in HM Forces around the world, with addresses which don’t include geographic information, to allow mail to be sent to someone regardless of where they are currently stationed.
Since 2012 Royal Mail have worked with BFPO to include postcodes alongside a BFPO number and address to allow inclusion in online ordering services that require a postcode to be entered.
Learn more about BFPO addresses
4. Not Yet Built
Not Yet Built from Royal Mail contains addresses that are at the planning-approved or under-construction phase but that are not yet being delivered to by Royal Mail.
Insurance firms, utility providers and estate agents can make use of them to validate that a building is going to exist in the future, in order to arrange installation of broadband for example.
The Not Yet Built dataset can be searched alongside or independently of PAF and MR with PostCoder, if you need to be able to search for addresses still under construction.
Learn more about Not yet Built
All four in Postcoder
Postcoder address lookup API by Allies provides the fastest, most reliable way to capture and validate addresses using all four of these datasets.
Postcoder enables people to use their postcode to lookup and fill in their address. Postcode lookup is up to 80% faster than typing an address manually. Automatic address verification provides addresses that are 100% up to date and postally correct.
