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59-627: The DA postcode area , also known as the Dartford postcode area , is a group of eighteen postcode districts in England, within eleven post towns . These cover parts of south-east London and north-west Kent . The main sorting office in Dartford ceased operating in 2012 and became a Delivery Office. The area served includes most of the London Borough of Bexley and very small parts of

118-485: A "postcode unit", identifies a group of addresses or a major delivery point. It consists of an outward code and inward code. The outward code indicates the area and district, while the inward code specifies the sector and delivery point, the delivery point typically encompassing about 10-15 addresses. The initial postcode system evolved from named postal districts introduced in London and other large cities from 1857. London

177-425: A locality; this allows large organisations long-term flexibility as to where they receive their mail. This postcode area is used by Lloyds Banking Group (BX1 1LT), HSBC (BX8 0HB) and parts of HM Revenue and Customs like VAT (BX5 5AT) and Pay As You Earn (BX9 1AS). Lloyds Bank also use BX4. After splitting from Lloyds, TSB Bank uses BX4 7SB, the latter part of which, when written, looks similar to "TSB". GIR 0AA

236-749: A long time coming" and "... Sark should have had its own identity back then [when postcodes were adopted in 1993]". Some of the British Overseas Territories have postcodes that broadly follow the format of the UK postcode system or, in Gibraltar's case, adopts the UK format: These were introduced because mail was often sent to the wrong place, e.g., to St Helena instead of St Helens, Merseyside or St Helens, Isle of Wight . and to Edinburgh instead of Edinburgh, Tristan da Cunha , and many online companies would not accept addresses without

295-719: A mnemonic (SB, and with 58 looking like SB), though it is located in the G43 postcode district; and in Glasgow G70 is allocated to HMRC which is located in G67. Some are in fact geographic e.g. EH99 1SP for the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh. The BF postcode area was introduced in 2012 to provide optional postcodes for B ritish F orces Post Office addresses, for consistency with the layout of other UK addresses. It uses

354-590: A modified form by An Post , the postal service of the Republic of Ireland . In 1923, Glasgow was divided in a similar way to London, with numbered districts preceded by a letter denoting the compass point (C, W, NW, N, E, S, SW, SE). In January 1932 the Postmaster General approved the designation of some predominantly urban areas into numbered districts. In November 1934 the Post Office announced

413-471: A much larger administrative area. The London post town covers 40% of Greater London and the remaining 60% of Greater London's area has postcodes referring to 13 other post towns. Additionally, there were too few postcodes to adequately cover districts in central London (particularly in the WC and EC areas), so these were subdivided with a letter suffix rather than being split into new numbered districts so as to retain

472-502: A number (denoting a sector within the district), and ends with two letters (denoting delivery points which are allocated to streets, sides of a street or individual properties). Postcode areas are usually, but not always, named after a major town or city – such as B for Birmingham. Some are named after a smaller town (e.g. Southall postcode area is UB after Uxbridge) or a combination of towns (e.g. SM appears to be named after S utton and M orden). A small number are regional – such as HS for

531-436: A number of post towns and postcode districts. As a general rule, the central part of the town/city the postcode area is named after will have the number 1 e.g. B1 (central Birmingham) – but there a limited number of postcode areas that start 0 or 10, e.g. SL0 and AB10. Croydon uniquely has no CR1 despite having CR0 and CR2-CR10 (an unintended outcome from the initial pilot of three letter postcode areas, where "CRO" for Croydon

590-435: A postal district. Examples of inward codes are "0NY", "7GZ", "7HF", or "8JQ". The postcode sector is made up of a single digit (the first character of the inward code). Most postcode areas do not use all of the sectors 0-9 in order to allow for the possibility of more sectors being added in the face of new development. Rather, in the initial allocation of postcodes, neighbouring postcode districts were often assigned to contain

649-614: A postcode area in the UK. Some postcode areas do not correspond to geographical areas. They can be - (a) postcode areas with no geographic link (for use by Large Volume Receivers ("bulk mail", with delivery options determined between the LVR and Royal Mail) and these can for general mail or specific functions (e.g. parcel returns; centralised scanning of mail); (b) non-geographic postcode districts or sectors contained within geographic postcode areas (for LVRs or PO Boxes); and (c) specific purpose postcodes. For those within geographic postcode areas,

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708-611: A postcode. Mail from the UK continues to be treated as international, not inland, and sufficient postage must be used. Bermuda has developed its own postcode system , with unique postcodes for street and PO Box addresses, as have the Cayman Islands , Montserrat and the British Virgin Islands . Montserrat recently introduced postal codes, and a system has been under consideration in Gibraltar with

767-482: A series of freely available, downloadable postcode products that link all current and terminated UK postcodes to a range of administrative, health, statistical and other geographies using the Code-Point Open grid reference. The postcodes are alphanumeric, and are (possibly uniquely) variable in length: ranging from six to eight characters (including a space). Each postcode is divided into two parts separated by

826-490: A single postcode area BT (named for Belfast). Postcodes generally do not align with historical county or local authority boundaries, and can also cross national boundaries (e.g. the CH and TD postcode areas). The mnemonic features various combinations - most commonly, first two letters (CH for CH ester); first and last letters (BH for B ournemout H ); first and key syllable letters (IV for I n V erness). Each postcode area contains

885-399: A single space: the outward code and the inward code respectively. The outward code includes the postcode area and the postcode district , respectively. The inward code includes the postcode sector and the postcode unit respectively. Examples of postcodes are "SW1W 0NY", "PO16 7GZ", "GU16 7HF", and "L1 8JQ". The outward code is the part of the postcode before the single space in

944-590: A small number of street signs with (for example) "Salford 7" at the bottom. In other cases, the district numbers were replaced with unrelated numbers. In Glasgow many of its G-prefixed numbers are not used following the transposition of the earlier compass point distrcits to "G" districts: C1 became G1, W1 became G11, N1 became G21, E1 became G31, S1 became G41, SW1 became G51, and so on. In London (as postally defined), 1917-created postal districts are mapped unchanged today despite Greater London, created in April 1965, covering

1003-520: A space, then a two-digit number (which, unlike the current format, could include a leading zero), and finally a single letter (instead of the two final letters in the current format). In October 1965, Tony Benn as Postmaster General announced that postal coding was to be extended to the rest of the country in the next few years. On 1 May 1967 postcodes were introduced in Croydon . The many postcodes for central Croydon began with "CRO", while those of

1062-619: A town in which to experiment with codes. The envisaged format was a six-character alphanumeric code with three letters designating the geographical area and three numbers to identify the individual address. On 28 July Ernest Marples , the Postmaster General , announced that Norwich had been selected, and that each of the 150,000 private and business addresses would receive a code by October. Norwich had been selected as it already had eight automatic mail sorting machines in use. The original Norwich format consisted of "NOR", followed by

1121-532: A wartime measure to improve efficiency, each postal district was subdivided into sub-districts each identified by a number; the area served directly by the district head office was allocated the number 1; the other numbers were allocated alphabetically by delivery office, e.g. N2 East Finchley delivery office, N3 Finchley delivery office, N4 Finsbury Park delivery office etc. Since then these sub-districts have changed little. Some older road signs in Hackney still show

1180-418: A wide area, for example "RH" covers various settlements in eastern Surrey and north eastern West Sussex, and "BT" ( Belfast ) covers the whole of Northern Ireland . The postcode district is one digit, two digits or a digit followed by a letter. The inward code is the part of the postcode after the single space in the middle. It is three characters long. The inward code assists in the delivery of post within

1239-455: Is a postcode created for Gir obank in Bootle . It remained in use by its successors when Girobank was taken over by Alliance & Leicester and subsequently by Santander UK . XM4 5HQ is a postcode created for letters sent to Santa Claus or Father Christmas (with XM4 5 HQ resembling "XMAS"). The non-geographic postcode area XX is used by online retailers for returns by Royal Mail, and

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1298-600: Is as follows, where A signifies a letter and 9 a digit: Notes: A postcode can be validated against a table of all 1.7 million postcodes in Code-Point Open . The full delivery address including postcode can be validated against the Royal Mail Postcode Address File (PAF), which lists 29 million valid delivery addresses, constituting most (but not all) addresses in the UK. A regular expression for validating UK postcodes

1357-523: Is covered by sections of twelve adjoining postcode areas: EN , IG , RM , DA , BR , TN , CR , SM , KT , TW , HA and UB . The Crown dependencies (which are not part of the United Kingdom) did not introduce postcodes until later, but use a similar coding scheme. They are separate postal authorities. Glasgow, like London, was divided into compass districts: C, W, NW, N, E, SE, S, SW. When postcodes were introduced, these were mapped into

1416-537: Is further divided into post towns and postcode districts . There are on average 20 postcode districts to a postcode area, with ZE having the lowest (3) and BT the highest (81). The London post town is instead divided into several postcode areas. The single or pair of letters chosen for postcode areas are generally intended as a mnemonic for the places served. Postcode areas, post towns and postcode districts do not follow political or local authority administrative boundaries and usually serve much larger areas than

1475-632: Is specified in the British Standards document BS 7666. All or part of one or more postcode districts are grouped into post towns . Larger post towns may use more than one postcode district, for example Crawley uses RH10 and RH11. In a minority of cases, a single number can cover two or more post towns – for example, the WN8 district includes Wigan and Skelmersdale post towns; and the GL17 district contains five post towns. The Channel Islands and

1534-582: The Isle of Man established their own postal administrations separate from the UK in 1969. Despite this, they adopted the UK-format postcodes in 1993–94: Guernsey using GY , the Isle of Man using IM , and Jersey using JE . The independent jurisdiction of Sark was assigned a unique postcode district GY10 in 2011 to differentiate it from Alderney . The CEO of Guernsey Post, Boley Smillie, said "this has been

1593-726: The London Borough of Bromley and the Royal Borough of Greenwich , while in Kent it covers almost all the Borough of Dartford , most of the Gravesham district, the northeastern part of the Sevenoaks district and a very small part of the borough of Tonbridge and Malling . The approximate coverage of the postcode districts: 51°24′N 0°18′E  /  51.4°N 0.3°E  / 51.4; 0.3 Postcodes in

1652-584: The Postcode Address File database. Theoretically, deliveries can reach their destination using the house number (or name if the house has no number) and postcode alone; however, this is against Royal Mail guidelines, which request the use of a full address. The London post town covers 40% of Greater London . On inception (in 1857/8), it was divided into ten postal districts: EC (East Central), WC (West Central), N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W, and NW. The S and NE sectors were later abolished. In 1917, as

1711-667: The Western district of London. By 1967, codes had been introduced to Aberdeen, Southampton, Brighton and Derby . In 1970, codes were introduced to the London Western and North Western postal districts. In December 1970, much Christmas mail was postmarked with the message "Remember to use the Postal Code" although codes were used to sort mail in only a handful of sorting offices . During 1971, occupants of addresses began to receive notification of their postcode. Asked in

1770-551: The Elizabeth Line). See postcode area . Postcodes have been adopted for a wide range of purposes in addition to aiding the sorting of mail: for calculating insurance premiums, designating destinations in route planning software and as the lowest level of aggregation in census enumeration. The boundaries of each postcode unit and within these the full address data of currently about 29 million addresses (delivery points) are stored, maintained and periodically updated in

1829-647: The House of Commons about the completion of the coding exercise, the Minister of State for Posts and Telecommunications (whose role superseded that of Postmaster General in 1969), Sir John Eden , stated that it was expected to be completed during 1972. The scheme was finalised in 1974 when Norwich was completely re-coded but the scheme tested in Croydon was sufficiently close to the final design for it to be retained, with CRO standardised as CR0 (district zero) thus removing

DA postcode area - Misplaced Pages Continue

1888-572: The North East (NE) sector/district. Following the successful introduction of postal districts in London, the system was extended to other large towns and cities. Liverpool was divided into Eastern, Northern, Southern and Western districts in 1864/65, and Manchester and Salford into eight numbered districts in 1867/68. In 1917, Dublin —then still part of the United Kingdom—was divided into numbered postal districts . These continue in use in

1947-514: The Outer H ebride s , FY for Fy lde (the region around Blackpool) and ME for the Me dway conurbation, with Rochester as its main post town. In the case of London (a Post Town), there is not a single "London" postcode area; rather there are eight (N, E, EC, SE, SW, W, WC and NW) reflecting the preceding system for coding London based on compass points. In the case of Northern Ireland, the entire province has

2006-686: The United Kingdom Postal codes used in the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown dependencies are known as postcodes (originally, postal codes). They are alphanumeric and were adopted nationally between 11 October 1959 and 1974, having been devised by the General Post Office ( Royal Mail ). The system was designed to aid in sorting mail for delivery. It uses alphanumeric codes to designate geographic areas. A full postcode, also known as

2065-474: The area may be numbered according to a different pattern - Numbering of postcode districts is normally consecutive, starting from "aa1" (e.g. Halifax which has seven districts numbered consecutively HX1 to HX7), but this is not universal. As well as the numbering patterns, non-consecutive numbering arises when geographic realities are faced and consecutive numbering would be potentially misleading or unhelpful, or when new districts are created or added/removed from

2124-514: The boundaries and address data for around 29 million addresses, ensuring accurate delivery and extensive utility beyond postal services. A full postcode is known as a "postcode unit" and designates an area with several addresses or a single major delivery point. The structure of a postcode is two alphanumeric codes that show, first, the name post town and, second, a small group of addresses in that post town. The first alphanumeric code (the outward code or outcode) has between two and four characters and

2183-525: The code GX11 1AA being introduced as the generic postcode for the territory in the interim. The separate postal code systems for those territories are shown below: The British Sovereign Base Areas of Akrotiri and Dhekelia in Cyprus use Cypriot postal codes for civilian use. The British military use BFPO addresses. List of postcode areas in the United Kingdom Each postcode area

2242-523: The correct district number for every street in the ten areas. The ten areas were: For example, Toxteth was Liverpool 8 . A single numbering sequence was shared by Manchester and Salford: letters would be addressed to Manchester 1 or Salford 7 (lowest digits, respectively). Some Birmingham codes were sub-divided with a letter, such as Great Barr, Birmingham 22 or Birmingham 22a , as can still be seen on many older street-name signs. The Post Office experimented with electromechanical sorting machines in

2301-435: The district number in the address at the head of letters. A publicity campaign in the following year encouraged the use of the district numbers. The slogan for the campaign was "For speed and certainty always use a postal district number on your letters and notepaper". A poster was fixed to every pillar box in the affected areas bearing the number of the district and appealing for the public's co-operation. Every post office in

2360-698: The familiar codes. Prior to 1 April 2010, the Royal Mail licensed use of the postcode database for a charge of about £4,000 per year. Following a campaign and a government consultation in 2009, the Ordnance Survey released Code-Point Open, detailing each current postcode in Great Britain together with a geo-code for re-use free of charge under an attribution-only licence ( Open Government Licence as part of OS OpenData ). The Office for National Statistics (ONS Geography) maintains and publishes

2419-523: The first two numbers can be any number though they are generally larger than the numbers allocated to geographic districts. Some fall within the range 91 to 99 (e.g. S98 for payments to MNBA Ltd; NE98 for Department for Work and Pensions , Central Office, Newcastle-upon-Tyne). However, there are many exceptions to this - e.g. American Express has the postcode area BN88; in Glasgow G58 1SB is allocated to National Savings, formerly National Savings Bank, as

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2478-434: The introduction of numbered districts (short postal codes) in "every provincial town in the United Kingdom large enough to justify it". Pamphlets were issued to each householder and business in ten areas notifying them of the number of the district in which their premises lay. The pamphlets included a map of the districts, and copies were made available at local head post offices. The public were "particularly invited" to include

2537-423: The late 1950s. These devices presented 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 1959 the Post Office analysed the results of a survey on public attitudes towards the use of postal codes, choosing

2596-484: The middle. It is between two and four characters long. Examples of outward codes are "L1", "W1A", "RH1", "RH10" or "SE1P". A few outward codes are non-geographic, not divulging where mail is to be sent. The postcode area is part of the outward code. The postcode area is either one or two characters long and is alphabetical, with there being 121 such areas. Examples of postcode areas are "L" for Liverpool , "RH" for Redhill and "EH" for Edinburgh . A postal area may cover

2655-434: The national non-geographic post town " BFPO " and, as of 2012, the postcode district "BF1". Each BFPO number is assigned an inward code, which are grouped as: 0 - Germany, 1 - UK, 2 - Rest of Europe, 3 - Rest of World, 4 - Ships and Naval Parties, 5 - Rest of World, Operations and Exercises, 6 - Rest of World, Operations and Exercises. The non-geographic postcode area BX has been introduced for addresses which do not include

2714-422: The need to create a CR1 district. A quirk remained: the central Newport (Gwent) area was allocated NPT at a similar time to Croydon becoming CRO, and surrounding areas were (as today) allocated NP1–NP8. NPT lasted until the end of 1984 when it was recoded NP9. Girobank 's GIR 0AA was the last domestic postcode with a fully alphabetical outward code. That code no longer exists in the Royal Mail's PAF system, but

2773-477: The new G postcode: C1 became G1, W1 became G11, N1 became G21, E1 became G31, S1 became G41, SW1 became G51, and so on. As NW and SE had never been subdivided they became G20 and G40 respectively. Norwich and Croydon were used for a postcode experiment in the late 1960s, which was replaced by the current system. The format was of the form NOR or CRO followed by two numbers and a letter, e.g. NOR 07A. They were later changed to CR0 (digit '0') and NR1. When Ireland

2832-422: The numbered district was also to display this information. Printers of Christmas cards and stationery were requested to always include district numbers in addresses, and election agents for candidates in the upcoming general election were asked to ensure they correctly addressed the 100 million items of mail they were expected to post. Businesses were issued with a free booklet containing maps and listings of

2891-582: The place names with which they are associated. Many post towns are former "county towns" but postcode areas rarely align with the county (or successor authority) area. For example, within the PA postcode area the PA1 and PA78 postcode districts are 140 miles (225 km) apart, and cover 5 local authority areas; and the eight postcode areas of the London post town cover only 40% of Greater London . The remainder of its area

2950-463: The postcode area. Accordingly, many postcode districts are not physically contiguous, despite the inference from their numbering. The centrality of a postcode district within a postcode area cannot be reliably inferred from the postcode alone (e.g. SE1 covers a large part of Central London south of the Thames (Waterloo and the borough of Southwark) whereas SE2 covers Abbey Wood at the far eastern end of

3009-409: The postcode sector. A postcode unit generally represents a street, part of a street, a single address, a group of properties, a single property, a sub-section of the property, an individual organisation or (for instance Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency ) a subsection of the organisation. The level of discrimination is often based on the amount of mail received by the premises or business. The format

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3068-442: The second (the inward code or incode) always has three characters. The outcode indicates the postcode area and postcode district. It consists of one or two letters, followed by one digit, two digits, or one digit and one letter. This is followed by a space and then the incode which indicates the postcode sector and delivery point (usually a group of around 10-15 addresses, but can vary). The incode (always three characters), starts with

3127-554: The surrounding post towns with CR2, CR3 and CR4. The uniform system of a set of three final characters after the space (such as 0AA, known as the inward code) was adopted. This was to be the beginning of a ten-year plan, costing an estimated £24 million. Within two years it was expected that full coding would be used in Aberdeen , Belfast , Brighton , Bristol , Bromley , Cardiff , Coventry , Manchester , Newcastle upon Tyne , Newport , Reading , Sheffield , Southampton and

3186-399: The ten sectors between them. For example, across the three postcode districts BS6-8 (which are next to each other in north west Bristol ), sectors 1-4 were assigned to BS8, sectors 5-7 were assigned to BS6, and sectors 8-9 and 0 were assigned to BS7 (more recent changes have resulted in all three of those areas now having a sector 9). The postcode unit is two characters added to the end of

3245-742: Was a part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland a postal district system was introduced in 1917 by the UK government. The letter D was assigned to Dublin. Upon the establishment of the Irish Free State and later, the Republic of Ireland , the Irish government retained the designation and today it forms part of the Eircode system, a postcode format slightly different from the UK format and identifying individual addresses. Since Irish independence, D has never been reassigned as

3304-654: Was divided into numbered subdivisions in 1917, which extended to other cities by 1934. The territory of the UK is broken down into 121 postcode areas. Each postcode area contains multiple post towns and districts. Postcode areas are mnemonically named after the area's major post town (such as TR for TR uro) although some are named after smaller towns or regional areas. Postcodes have since been additionally used in various applications. Postcodes help calculate insurance premiums, designate destinations in route planning software, and serve as aggregation units in census enumeration. The Postcode Address File (PAF) database stores and updates

3363-529: Was taken over by the bank's current owners, Santander UK . When the national postcode system was introduced, many existing postal districts were incorporated into it, so that postcodes in Toxteth (Liverpool 8) start with L8. The districts in both Manchester and Salford gained M postcodes, so Salford 7 became M7 and so on (and similarly in Brighton and Hove, both using the prefix BN). The old coding lives on in

3422-434: Was transferred to the new format and became CR0, rather than CR1). Large post towns are generally numbered from the centre outward such that outlying parts have higher numbered districts. In most post towns, the postcode "aa1 1AA" was allocated to the crown or principal post office. These are increasingly defunct, as post offices have closed or moved. Alternatively, but less commonly, post towns and postcode districts within

3481-557: Was used for COVID-19 test samples. Certain British Overseas Territories introduced single postal codes for their territory or major sub-sections of it. These are not UK postcodes, even though many are formatted in a similar fashion: Other overseas territories have introduced their own more extensive postcode systems: Civilian residential and business addresses in Akrotiri and Dhekelia are served by Cyprus Postal Services and use Cypriot postal codes . Mail to Overseas Territories

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