[Talk-GB] Postcode centroids

[Lester Caine]

Andy Robinson (blackadder-lists) wrote:
> One thing that is absolutely clear to me is that you can't add postcodes
> unless you have been around and assigned the right houses to the right
> streets. On older  traditional streets where this is clear from imagery it's
> not so difficult but in new housing estates it's impossible unless you have
> walked the patch first. After that it all drops into place really rather
> easily.

In the final analysis, a building should have it's post code as part of the 
address. Ideally that would be picked up from the 'road' that the building is 
attached to. So the address would consist of a 'house name/number' on a tag for 
the building, and a link somehow to the road which provides the other data for 
the full address. Tagging ALL that information for every building is something 
which should be avoided.

The problem with the OS pointcode data is that it does NOT include the road name 
since that is the bit that Royal Mail still demand payment for. The PAF file of 
cause has ALL of the buildings along with their coordinates, but the licence 
prevents that being used, so we have to physically recreate it from the ground 
up. Moving forward, where postcodes are already available as part of postal 
information then no problem, but it would be useful if the missing postcodes 
were added even if they still require linking to the relevant road. There does 
seem to be a disagreement between authorities over how postcodes are defined, 
but the Royal Mail rule is that a single road has a single postcode for a 'walk' 
group, so longer roads will be broken down ( and if one side of a road is on a 
different 'walk' then it will have a different postcode ). Where a group of 
roads in a small enough area, then the 'road' will be the main route that they 
all link to, and the 'sub-road' is secondary information ... but THAT is an area 
where council LLPG officers may quote different postcodes to the one listed in PAF.

One thing that has been established is that a google lookup of a postcode may 
give a number of properties on the related road and so provide the missing 
information to link the postcode to a physical road.

-- 
Lester Caine - G8HFL
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