The United Kingdom has around 26 million postal addresses, or delivery points.
A postal address may contain the following elements:
Organisation
Sub-building Name
Building Name
Building Number
Dependent Street
Street
Dependent Locality
Locality
Post Town
County
Postcode
As a rule, every postal address needs to contain one and only one address element of type Post Town and Postcode, and a combination of some (not necessarily all) elements of other types, appearing in the order shown above.
The definitive list of UK postal addresses, the Postal Address File (PAF®), is maintained by the Royal Mail (the UK postal authority) in conjunction with other Government departments including the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and Ordnance Survey (OS) who together take responsibility for address grid referencing.
PAF® offers a grid reference for each of the 1.6 million unique postcodes that Royal Mail uses to organise postal delivery. Grid references (derived from the ONS Central Postcode Directory (POSTZON)) are accurate to 100 meters in England and Wales and 10 meters in Scotland.
Organisations which hold address-based data (customer lists, supplier locations and so forth) may use address management software to verify or structure address data and to extract grid referenced data for mapping in geographic information systems.
Users requiring highly accurate address-based grid references may also use Ordnance Survey's ADDRESS-POINT™ product to obtain highly accurate (0.1 meter) grid references for addresses listed on PAF®
Address management software is used either to check the validity of addresses against PAF® (address matching) or to add postcodes to un-postcoded addresses (postcoding).
Address matching ensures that mailing databases contain postally correct addresses, thereby minimising the amount of mis-directed mail and - in the case of large mailings - sorting the mailshot to qualify the mailer for volume discounts.
Postcoding, whilst helping in mailings, is more often used to attach a geo-reference (spatial location) to database records so that they can be mapped using a geographic information system.
Capscan's Matchcode software is the PAF® management software used in-house at Business Geographics. The software runs under Windows® and Unix using CD-ROM as the delivery and storage media for the PAF® file.
Capscan receive quarterly PAF® updates from Royal Mail, process the tapes and distribute PAF® on CD-ROM. Running from CD the software can address match or postcode around 30,000 records per hour.
Matchcode provides all the major tools required for address processing:
Batch Processing - Automatic match rates typically 90% or more on the first run with processing speeds of up to 190,000 records per hour.
Interactive Processing - Single screen access to all the tools needed for efficient address processing.
Cross Matching and Fuzzy Matching - Automatic correction of incomplete, misspelt or abbreviated addresses.
Browsing - Extensive browsing tools for searching PAF® using exact matching on individual address elements.
Rapid Addressing - Address generation from the postcode, returning a postally correct address and a list of valid house/building numbers or names.
Geographical Linkage - Facilities for outputting grid references, NHS district and local authority ward codes.
In addition to PAF®-based address data, Matchcode may also be used to interrogate or manage electoral roll (name-based) information.
Matchcode PAF® Extractor
Number of licences
Cost
Subsequent Year Cost
1
£1,200.00
£700.00
The Matchcode PAF® Extractor, specified by and developed for Business Geographics, also offers the facility to:
Extract Addresses - Address extraction from PAF® to external (eg comma-delimited) files for required postcodes, postcode sectors, districts or areas.
Address extractions from PAF® may be used to geographically target mailings or to drive sampling exercises.
Ordnance Survey's ADDRESS-POINT™ product (here shown against a backdrop of Ordnance Survey Land-Line.Plus™) provides a national grid reference accurate to a resolution of 0.1 meters allowing for the precise geographical location of address-based data.
Where there is a requirement to match addresses to PAF® prior to ordering ADDRESS-POINT™ grid references please either contact the office or send email to info@geoweb.co.uk.
