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The Introduction of Postal Codes As far back as the early 19th century, people were using post towns and county names to help their mail reach its intended recipients. News Categories. Related News Stories. We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. However you may visit Cookie Settings to provide a controlled consent. Close Privacy Overview This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website.
There are more than 1. This number changes regularly as around 2, postcodes are created and 2, are terminated each month. The allocation of postcodes depends on the amount of mail received. Large users of mail such as the DVLA have different postcodes for different departments.
The unit postcodes are used to find about 30 million actual addresses or delivery points, the minimum number of delivery points for a postcode is one, the maximum is , and on average the postcode is allocated to 17 delivery points. There are on average postcodes to each sector: the most being , the least is 1.
That leaves 20 for each letter. Since their inception, postcodes have become more than just a tool to help address mail. As postcodes nest into sectors, districts and areas, the postcode has become a handy label to define geographical locations. Postcode boundaries provide a convenient way to tie people into manageable groups with similar lifestyles and outlooks to form the building blocks of geodemographic analysis.
See our blog on geodemographic analysis Although postcodes focus on addresses, their aggregated groupings and boundaries provide an ideal building block for geographic analysis.
Most businesses have data that is attached to postcode information. This could be customer records, or sales receipts for a store where the customers are most likely to travel to. Having data attached to postcodes opens up analysis and comparisons using census or other demographic data. Our own GIS systems can use postcodes as their geographical key. Read about our work with postcode mapping Postcodes are a far more accessible reference than coordinates or longitude and latitude making them ideal for setting departure and destination points in navigation tools.
However, the sheer number of postcodes means that when you move beyond individual journeys, for business or fleet logistics planning the calculations required quickly become unmanageable. See our blog on postcode sector-based journey planning In existence in some form for more than 1, years, the divisions are based on long-standing counties and parish boundaries, which have themselves changed and been sub-divided over the centuries.
This reference source ties postcodes to census and other demographic datasets. Read our blog exploring the history and use of administrative geography As you can see, postcodes have developed into far more than just a means of directing your post, they have become a fundamental building block for navigation, logistics and economic operation. Postcode mapping for business is what we do, so forgive us if we seem a little too passionate about the subject, but I'm sure you'll agree, there really is a lot to the humble postcode.
We've spent more than 25 years working with postcode geography and postcode mapping. If you'd like to see if we can help your business, please get in touch. Contact us online or call us on: Turning a list or spreadsheet of postcode data into a series of points on a map isn't as simple as using an Excel wizard to do it for you, but it isn't rocket science.
We look at the latest update to TimeTravel, our dataset of drive times and distances between any postcode sector or district. What has changed in the UK road and geographic network, plus new features to make it even more accurate. But what is it, and why should we care? Each year for cycletoworkday we take a look at cycling statistics across the country and try to map that data and find interesting trends. This is mainly because we at Beacon Dodsworth are either a little bit obsessed about cycling, or we tend to worry about the environment.
Recently, we were contacted by a company responsible for organising charity door knockers. They needed more than 9, postcode sectors mapped at A4 size to use at a local level to plan fundraising routes and clearly define territories for each agent.
With the next census due to take place this year, we thought it was a good time to take stock of some of the changes and trends we noticed between the and the census. What difference does 10 years make to our society and the people that live within it? Now we are back in the office, we continue to support hybrid working. Administrative geography is a way of dividing the country into smaller sub-divisions or areas that correspond with the area of responsibility of local authorities and government bodies.
S and NE were later dropped and are now used for Sheffield and Newcastle. The numbered subdivisions W1, W2 etc were a war-time measure and date from The subdivisions remain important, because they form the first part of the two-part modern postcode so N1 1AA is an address in the old N1 district , and because they continue to be used by Londoners to refer to their districts.
In the late 's, the Post Office experimented with electromechanical sorting machines. These devices would present an envelope to an operator, who would press a button indicating which bin to sort the letter into. Postcodes were suggested to increase the efficiency of this process, by removing the need for the sorter to remember the correct sorting for as many places. In January the Post Office analysed the results of a survey on public attitudes towards the use of postal codes.
The next step would be choosing a town in which to experiment with coded addresses. Postcoded letters are read by Royal Mail's machinery and sorted 30 times faster than those dealt with by hand.
Postcodes are used widely for non-postal services, such as online shopping or satellite navigation systems. The first steps towards the modern day postcode were taken in when Sir Rowland Hill, inventor of the postage stamp, introduced a scheme to accelerate mail delivery.
The public were asked to add these district letters to the bottom of written addresses, to help speed up delivery. Most Popular Now 56, people are reading stories on the site right now.
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