Tuesday 7 March 2017

Have you moved ...

... or was it just your postcode?

The new open version of GB postcodes has some strange anomalies in it. There are nearly 1.7 million postcodes, but there are over 45,000 that have moved location since the November 2016 version. Most that have moved have moved less than 20 metres but 1,520 have moved 500m or more. There are 15 that have moved more than 10km, with the furthest moving over 62km.

The source of these open postcodes have changed, maybe the process that generates them has a problem in it. I'm going to look into this some more and try to get some information from Ordnance Survey too.

Maybe this is normal but it feels odd to me.

2 comments:

Shaun McDonald said...

Could the ones that have moved the furthest be a business specific postcode and moved with the business? Could some of the smaller moves be due to delivery points being added or removed from the postcode thus moving the centroid?

Chris Hill said...

Hi Shaun,
Thanks for the ideas.

Can businesses keep their postcode when they move? If so that might be part of the answer.

The small movements are not always due to new developments. They include some in the village I live in, with no changes to the the road that the postcode covers at all. Often new developments add a new road, that would get a new postcode so not affect the existing centroids.