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The
All Fields Postcode Directory is an OfficeOfNationalStatistics product which lists, for each postcode, data about its geographical location and location in various administrative units. I (ChrisLightfoot) have some sample data from this database; you can also read the
user guide for the AFPD. The AFPD is periodically updated to incorporate new postcodes and boundary changes.
Pricing info
From a nice lady at the ONS:
An estimated cost for website usage for UK postcodes linked to Local Authorities, wards and Parliamentary Constituences would be £1270.00 + VAT and linked to just P/Cons would be £550.00 + VAT. -- addittion fields requested would increase the cost If the website is going to be yours(ie MySociety) , no reduction can be made in connection with ODPM.
UK Gazatteer
I've (Jake Gordon -
http://www.jakeg.co.uk/ ) some experience with this, having developed
http://www.estateangels.co.uk . What you really need for most projects is this: - northings/eastings - postcode (at least down to sector level) - place name
The best dataset for this is a UK gazetteer, such as from
http://www.graticule.com/ . They charge £350 exc. VAT per year. Data is such as:
Name,Traditional County,Postcode Sector,Easting, Northing,Longditude,Latitude
Leeds,West Yorkshire,LS1 3,429829,433981,-1.547,53801 Birmingham,West Midlands,B4 7,407540,287600,-1.889,52.486 Chichester,West Sussex,PO19 1,486359,104953,-0.773,50.837 Elston,Lancashire,PR2 5,359910,432650,-2.617,53.787
Have a browse around estateangels.co.uk and you'll see how useful the data is. It includes around 14,000 place names. Try searching for '[placename] estate agents' in Google... then think about how you can take this to a non-profit community/society project.
Hope that helps someone.
Jake.
http://www.jakeg.co.uk/contact
Microsoft MapPoint
You maybe interested that for about £200, Microsoft offers it's
MapPoint software that has most of the fields that you are after including voting regions, detailed postcode info, Latitude and Longitude, this is all accessible via the underlying API. There is also an on-line product although I'm not sure how this works. There is a lot of information on !MapPoint and the Web Service at
http://www.mp2kmag.com.
