[Talk-GB] UK Postcodes - Potential data source

[Matt Williams]

On 27 August 2012 23:18, Rob Nickerson <rob.j.nickerson at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi All,
>
> Please correct me if I am wrong, but to the best of my understanding we are
> still struggling to find a good source of postcode data under an open
> licence. From what I understand the CodePoint data set is currently seen as
> not available for use in OSM.
>
> That is where this data set available under the OGL licence may help:
> http://www.landregistry.gov.uk/public/information/public-data/price-paid-data
>
> It's not perfect as it does not provide lat/lon co-ordinates, but it does
> include full addresses for residential properties sold within each month.
> This means that it gives us a link between address (something we can survey)
> and postcode (which we can't easily survey). It also states which properties
> are new (i.e. new builds, new addresses). Any thoughts?
>
> If this is a useful source I was thinking a simple database where we can
> look up an address and find a postcode for adding to OSM. Going one step
> further we could try to find automatic matches between OSM addresses and
> this dataset and therefore generate a list of postcodes that could be
> suitable for import. I guess for someone with experience this would be quite
> an do-able hack?

Hi Rob,

This does indeed seem like a very useful data source. Great find!

However, I'm struggling to think of a nice way of visualising it to
make it useful. What I've got so far in my mind is:
 - Take an entry from the list
 - Take its postcode
 - Search for the postcode (I've got a curated list of postcodes as
part of my PostCodeFinder [1])
 - Get the location of the nearest match (hopefully, we'll find at
least a CV4-type segment match)
 - Search for roads within an x mile radius with a matching name
 - Associate that entry with that road

Then we'd need to provide a sort of map or search tool where mappers
can get all the entries of interest for their local area. Everything
after that would have to be manual.

I will try to start to put together some scripts to process and
analyse some of this data if I get the chance. Of course, if anyone
else wants to jump in, feel free.

Matt

[1] http://milliams.dev.openstreetmap.org/postcodefinder/