Ordnance Survey Open Data – a gift from HMG
I don’t know how many people know about this but the Ordnance Survey now give away astonishing mapping tools as part of their Open Data. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think this came out of Gordon Brown enlisting Tim Berners-Lee to see how government could free up data it held to help the economy. I have now used it for postcodes.
Up until now the only way I knew of confirming a postcode inside a London Borough was through the Post Office Address File (PAF) which is resold by people like Quick Address Systems to junk mail (snail-mail) houses for hundreds or thousands of semolians.
If you go to Ordnance Survey’s download page you’ll see Code Point Open which is what I used. Every postcode in the country, it’s co-ordinates and the Administrative district and ward not to mention National Health area.
Currently I’m using it for a CAB website where people can see if they live in the borough or not from their postcode… or which CAB they should go to….
But look at some of the other datasets… it really has some exciting possibilities.
The Government Open Data licence reads just like the GNU Open Source licence – you’re free to use the data how you like as long as you attribute the source and don’t use it for evil. ;-)