Free Full UK Postcode Data

For a long time the full set of UK Postcode data has been subject to quite a hefty fee. I didn’t realise until today but, earlier this year, this information was made available by Ordnance Survey free of charge.

The data can be downloaded from here (https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/opendatadownload/products.html).

Just tick the checkbox entitled Code-Point Open then click Next. They then email you a link to the CSV file to download (about 20 mb).

Now, can this data be incorporated into a nifty Apex 4 Plug-in?

The License

The licensing for this data seems pretty open, too, which is good news.

Taken from the Ordnance Survey License found here:

You are free to:

 copy, distribute and transmit the Data;

 adapt the Data;

 exploit the Data commercially whether by sub-licensing it, combining it with other data, or by including it in your own product or application.

A Note on the CSV File

In the CSV files that you will download from the link that Ordnance Survey send you, column K is the British National Grid (BNG) X co-ordinate and column L is the BNG Y co-ordinate. You can use http://www.nearby.org.uk for converting the odd co-ordinate backwards and forwards between BNG and Lat/Lon.

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