This is the ONS Postcode Directory (ONSPD) for the United Kingdom as at February 2024 in Comma Separated Variable (CSV) and ASCII text (TXT) formats. This file contains the multi CSVs so that postcode areas can be opened in MS Excel. To download the zip file click the Download button. The ONSPD relates both current and terminated postcodes in the United Kingdom to a range of current statutory administrative, electoral, health and other area geographies. It also links postcodes to pre-2002 health areas, 1991 Census enumeration districts for England and Wales, 2001 Census Output Areas (OA) and Super Output Areas (SOA) for England and Wales, 2001 Census OAs and SOAs for Northern Ireland and 2001 Census OAs and Data Zones (DZ) for Scotland. It now contains 2021 Census OAs and SOAs for England, Wales and Northern Ireland. It helps support the production of area-based statistics from postcoded data. The ONSPD is produced by ONS Geography, who provide geographic support to the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and geographic services used by other organisations. The ONSPD is issued quarterly. (File size - 231 MB) Please note that this product contains Royal Mail, Gridlink, LPS (Northern Ireland), Ordnance Survey and ONS Intellectual Property Rights.

A lookup between postcodes and postcode sectors, postcode districts and postcode areas as at March 2021 in England and Wales (File size 5MB).

Postcode area and district polygons derived from Ordnance Survey Open Data using R and GRASS. Method used was creating voronoi polygons from point postcode data and dissolving boundaries based on postcode area and district attributes.Contains OS data © Crown Copyright and database rightFile descriptions:postcode_polygons.gpkg: geopackage file containing two polygon layers: postcode_area and postcode_district.postcode_aggregator.R: R script to extract area and district from full postcode.postcode_aggregator.sh: GRASS/Bash script to convert point postcode data into polygons.postcode_overview.png: image of polygons available.

Code-Point® with polygons shows the notional shape of every postcode unit in Great Britain, and includes major buildings with multiple postcodes. For compelling visuals, Code-Point with polygons lets you apply shading to individual postcodes on a map. This means you can analyse location data at the most granular level and bring your results vividly to life. We give you every single postcode in Great Britain and Northern Ireland – including those for different floors of high-rise buildings. For accuracy, we give every postcode a positional quality rating and map out the boundaries of only the postcodes we can locate most precisely. Code-Point® with polygons contains postcode boundaries for Great Britain. These show the extent of each postcode unit, enabling you to analyse information by postcode. Ideal for activities such as sales targeting or market profiling, as well as any statistical work. Includes notional polygons; vertical streets data; postcode units; eastings and northings; NHS® health authority codes; administrative codes; PO box indicator; and types of delivery points.

Postcode sector boundaries are created and maintained by National Records of Scotland (NRS). Postcode districts are represented by the outward code (first part of a postcode) plus the first character of the inward code. For example, if the individual postcode is EH12 7TB, then the sector of that postcode is EH12 7. Postcodes that fall within the same sector are dissolved to create postcode sector boundaries. NRS publish these boundaries twice a year as part of the Scottish Postcode Directory (SPD) which should be considered the definitive source for postcode geographies in Scotland.

Postcode unit boundaries are created and maintained by National Records of Scotland (NRS) for every live small user postcode so that the entire land surface of Scotland is covered by postcode polygons. This is the set of postcode boundaries used for 2011 census outputs. The dataset contains 145,690 postcode polygons.

A lookup between postcodes and postcode sectors, postcode districts, postcode areas and 2021 Census Output Areas as at August 2022 in England and Wales (File size 13MB).

This dataset includes a series of modified UK administrative boundary shapefiles based on the 2011 census which are intended for use in more accurate visualisation of UK geospatial data analysis. There are two key features of these shapefiles: (1) administrative shapes have been clipped to the Ordnance Survey buildings shapefile, so that in choropleth visualisations relating to demographic data filled spaces represent populated areas of the UK rather than large undifferentiated blocks. (2) Shapefiles have been simplified to reduce loading and processing time, in the case of this repository at 100m. After testing, we have settled on a procedure to render buildings layer visually comprehensible at high zoom levels, by adding a small buffer, dissolving (so that individual overlapping shapes combine into a single more easily visualised shape) and then simplifying at 150m. It is important to emphasise that because of the use of simplification (using a Ramer–Douglas–Peucker algorithm), these shapefiles are not suitable for analysis as boundaries may not be suitably precise or accurate. For users interested in the process used to generate these files you can consult the codebase deposited on github.

Many thanks to colleagues including Alasdair Rae for recommendations on technique used here. Computations were performed using the University of Birmingham's BEAR Cloud service, which provides flexible resource for intensive computational work to the University's research community. See http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/bear for more details. Given the massive size of datasets involved (including the district buildings vector shapefile which is 1.4gb and consists of hundreds of thousands of individual shapes), this work would have been impossible without this invaluable resource. I hope that these files will be of use to colleagues who may not have access to similar large computational arrays and make the process of visualising UK boundary and census data more accurate and efficient.

Original files are under OGLv3 licenses. Derived data files, where possible are licensed for use under CC BY 4.0.

Files include the following:

Original unmodified data:

infuse_ctry_2011.zip - original country level shapes, based on 2011 census, downloaded from https://borders.ukdataservice.ac.uk/ukborders/easy_download

infuse_dist_lyr_2011.zip - original local authority shapes, based on 2011 census, downloaded from https://borders.ukdataservice.ac.uk/ukborders/easy_download

TermsAndConditions.html - UK Data Service license details (OGLv3), applies to all the above

GB_Postcodes.zip - UK postcode district shapes, prepared by Addy Pope, https://datashare.ed.ac.uk/handle/10283/2597

Derived data files:

OS_Open_Zoomstack_district_buildings.zip - buildings layer extracted from Ordnance Survey Zoomstack package, licensed under OGLv3 and exported to gpkg format.

*_simplified_100m.gpkg - Administrative shapes from above, simplified in R at a resolution of 100 metres.

*_simplified_100m_buildings_overlay_simplified.gpkg - Administrative shapes from above, simplified in R at a resolution of 100 metres, and then clipped to the buildings layer.

*_simplified_100m_buildings_overlay_simplified.gpkg - Administrative shapes from above, simplified in R at a resolution of 100 metres, and then run against the buildings layer as a difference layer. Suitable for using as an overlay as the shapes are inverse.

Users who wish to use these shapefiles in a reproducible research context may want to download individual files directly from this repository. To do so, you could use the following R code:

load packages

require(sf) # load simplefeature data class, supercedes sp() and used for st_read

given the size and complexity even of simplified files here, ragg is highly recommended

for users on macos given inefficiencies in default R graphics device

require(ragg)

create paths as needed

if (dir.exists("data") == FALSE) { dir.create("data") }

download data files only if they aren't already present

if (file.exists("data/infuse_dist_lyr_2011.shp") == FALSE) { download.file("https://borders.ukdataservice.ac.uk/ukborders/easy_download/prebuilt/shape/infuse_dist_lyr_2011.zip", destfile = "data/infuse_dist_lyr_2011.zip") unzip("infuse_dist_lyr_2011.zip", exdir = "data")} local_authorities <- st_read("data/infuse_dist_lyr_2011.shp")

This is the ONS Postcode Directory (ONSPD) for the West Midlands Combined Authorities, containing comprehensive postcode data for the region.

The ONS Postcode Directory relates both current and terminated postcodes in the United Kingdom to a wide range of current statutory administrative, electoral, health and other area geographies. It also links postcodes to pre-2002 health areas, 1991 Census enumeration districts for England and Wales, 2001 Census Output Areas (OA) and Super Output Areas (SOA) for England and Wales, as well as Wards and Constituencies.

Every postcode record in the ONSPD is produced by ONS Geography, who provide geographic support to the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and geographic services used by other organisations. The postcode data is issued quarterly. Please note that this product contains Royal Mail, Gridlink, LPS (Northern Ireland), Ordnance Survey and ONS Intellectual Property Rights.

Data is updated quarterly. See https://geoportal.statistics.gov.uk/ for the full release schedule.To view previous versions see the Snapshots section on the Export tab.

      ℹ️

        Release



            August 2025

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Important Note

 Since the August 2024 release, the dataset now includes the new 2024 constituencies. You can use our Boundaries - Constituencies (2024) dataset to work with this new geography.
 This dataset will always contain the latest iteration of the postcodes file, ensuring you have access to the most up-to-date postcode mapping for analysis.

This is the set of postcode boundaries used for 2001 census outputs. The postcode boundaries for census were originally frozen in January 2001 for the purposes of producing census outputs. The dataset contains 139,045 postcode polygons.

The UK censuses took place on 29th April 2001. They were run by the Northern Ireland Statistics & Research Agency (NISRA), General Register Office for Scotland (GROS), and the Office for National Statistics (ONS) for both England and Wales. The UK comprises the countries of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Statistics from the UK censuses help paint a picture of the nation and how we live. They provide a detailed snapshot of the population and its characteristics, and underpin funding allocation to provide public services.

Census Support provides digitised boundary datasets of the UK, available in many Geographic Information System (GIS) formats. Most of these data are available as Open data under OGL v3 license. Postcode directories are also available although some of these are restricted to members of the academic community under 'Special Conditions'.

There are many digitised boundaries available. The main group of boundaries correspond to the various levels of 2011, 2001, 1991, 1981 and 1971 census geography which are designed to be used for spatial visualisation and analysis of census statistics. Also available are historic boundaries created by the Great Britain Historical GIS Project, held at the UK Data Archive under GN 33288 Great Britain Historical Database, 1841-1939.

This dataset provides detailed information on the 2019 Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) for Birmingham, UK. The data is available at the postcode level and includes the Lower Layer Super Output Area (LSOA) information.Data is provided at the LSOA 2011 Census geography.The decile score ranges from 1-10 with decile 1 representing the most deprived 10% of areas while decile 10 representing the least deprived 10% of areas.The IMD rank and decile score is allocated to the LSOA and all postcodes within it at the time of creation (2019).Note that some postcodes cross over LSOA boundaries. The Office for National Statistics sets boundaries for LSOAs and allocates every postcode to one LSOA only: this is the one which contains the majority of residents in that postcode area (as at 2011 Census).

The English Indices of Deprivation 2019 provide detailed measures of relative deprivation across small areas in England. The Employment Deprivation dataset is a crucial part of this index, highlighting the proportion of the working-age population that is involuntarily excluded from the labor market. This includes individuals who are unemployed, those who are unable to work due to illness or disability, and those who are caring for others. The dataset helps identify areas with high levels of employment deprivation, guiding policy interventions and resource allocation to improve employment opportunities and reduce socio-economic disparities.

Postcode unit boundaries are created and maintained by National Records of Scotland (NRS) for every live small user postcode so that the entire land surface of Scotland is covered by postcode polygons. The dataset represents the smallest plotted unit in Scotland which supports the production of high quality statistics. NRS publish these boundaries twice a year as part of the Scottish Postcode Directory (SPD) which should be considered the definitive source for postcode geographies in Scotland. Note the published version of the SPD does not include Royal Mail information on Delivery Point Count (DPC), Delivery Point Count Non-Residential (DPCNR) or Household Count (HC). Those interested in this information should enquire with geographycustomerservices@nrscotland.gov.uk.

This dataset contains categorical geographical information data files for the UK to enable the effective translation of climate data into new forms of actionable information.

These datasets have been created as part of the Earth Observation Climate Information Service (EOCIS) project, following the specific format and nature of the EOCIS Climate information at Hi-res for the UK (CHUK) grid, as specified by NCEO.

The information files cover the following attributes: * land and permanent water * tags for the devolved nation of the UK (also Eire, France, etc) * tags for the county / council / unitary authority / metropolitan or London borough * tags for the parish / community / town council * tags for the UK postcode sector * tags for appropriate administrative boundaries relating to the National Health Service * tags for appropriate administrative boundaries relating to the Fire Service * land classification * built and paved area fractions * presence of roads, railway tracks and transmission network * socioeconomic data of population, income, and educational attainment

Forest Enterprise Scotland comprises 10 Forest District boundary areas. Forest Enterprise England comprises 6 Forest District boundary areas. Attributes: DISTRICT Forest District Name ADDRESS_1 Address ADDRESS_2 Address ADDRESS_3 Address ADDRESS_4 Address POSTCODE Postcode PHONE_NO Telephone Number EMAIL Email Address (c) Crown copyright and database right 'year'. Ordnance Survey Licence number 100021242