According to a BBC report, UK’s Royal Mail will make its postal code database available to the public in April of next year. This follows a rogue API that provided the data, but was mum about where it came from. That site, ErnestMarples.com was named after a former postmaster general.
This marks a major shift from the Royal Mail, which previously charged at least 1000 pounds ($1600 USD) per year for access to the data. In October it forced ErnestMarples.com to shut down the API. The legal action appears to be triggered by a database leak that seems unrelated to the API, which claimed to maintain no database or cache of results.
ErnestMarples.com founder Harry Metcalfe recently met with the Royal Mail and he told the BBC he is “cautiously optimistic” about the news that the postal code is being freed. Specifically, Metcalfe hopes “the right data is released in the right way” by the Royal Mail. In August Metcalfe told us “The Government should pay to maintain the data and then release it as public sector information under the PSI Click-Use licence.”
For more background, watch the video interview with Metcalfe (embedded below). It was recorded before the latest news about the postal code being freed, but provides a great overview of the effort. In it, Metcalfe calls postal code data a “necessary prerequisite for many of the kinds of services government are encouraging people to make.”
For developers of location-based applications, it makes a ton of sense to be able to geocode postal codes. The full codes, such as SW1A 1AA (Buckingham Palace), are roughly equivalent to the complete 9 digit (5+4) U.S. Zip codes, providing address-level accuracy.
Hat tip: Directions Magazine
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