AddressBase Products February 2024 – Epoch 108

This release note provides information about the February 2024 (Epoch 108) release of the AddressBase products. These products were released to customers on 22 February 2024.

Record counts

Product	Full Supply Record Count[1]	Change-Only Update Record Count[2]
OS Open UPRN	40 693 173	N/A
AddressBase	30 414 522	136 905
AddressBase Plus	37 972 952	514 790
AddressBase Premium	See rows below	See rows below
Street	1 502 803	4 442
Street Descriptor	1 625 566	2 273
BLPU	40 693 173	324 380
Classification	44 565 452	166 679
LPI	45 806 592	148 634
Organisation	1 413 928	18 423
Delivery Point Address	30 518 991	69 821
Application Cross Ref.	197 454 866	681 108
Successor	0	0

1. These counts are based on a Managed Great Britain Set (MGBS). If you have ordered your national coverage via the online ordering system using a polygon outline, then your counts may differ.

2. Change-Only Updates are not available for the OS Open UPRN product.

Product supply comparison

There is a difference in product counts between taking a national Managed Great Britain Set (MGBS) and a national Area of Interest (AOI). This is because the two supplies use different selection criteria. The differences are shown in the following table, allowing for you to validate your data holdings once you have loaded the latest release of AddressBase data.

The national AOI refers to the pre-selection GB polygon from our download store. Therefore, if you have drawn your own AOI, the count will vary.

If you are unsure of your supply type, please check this with your OS Relationship Manager.

Product	MGBS Full Count	National AOI Full Count	Difference
AddressBase	30 414 522	30 414 522	0
AddressBase Plus	37 972 952	37 972 933	19
AddressBase Premium	See rows below	See rows below	See rows below
Street	1 502 803	1 502 800	3
Street Descriptor	1 625 566	1 625 563	3
BLPU	40 693 173	40 693 150	23
Classification	44 565 452	44 565 429	23
LPI	45 806 592	45 806 568	24
Organisation	1 413 928	1 413 926	2
Delivery Point Address	30 518 991	30 518 991	0
Application Cross Ref.	197 454 866	197 454 843	23
Successor	0	0	0

It is important that COUs are processed with Deletes first, then Inserts and Updates. This is to ensure that updates are applied in the correct order. Further guidance on this can be found in 'Working with COU data' in the AddressBase Getting Started Guide.

Changed records

If you receive a Change-Only Update (COU) supply for your AddressBase product, you will receive Insert, Update and Delete records within the supplied file. The following tables detail the numbers of these records which can be expected in an MGBS supply, and also how many tiles are affected if you take your supply as Changed Chunks.

AddressBase

Change Type	Count
Inserts	40 648
Updates	83 486
Deletes	12 771
COU Populated Tile Count	5 305

AddressBase Plus

Change Type	Count
Inserts	60 179
Updates	438 033
Deletes	16 578
COU Populated Tile Count	7 274

AddressBase Premium

AddressBase Premium Table	Inserts	Updates	Deletes
Street	1 072	3 357	13
Street Descriptor	1 247	1 011	15
BLPU	53 653	265 882	4 845
Classification	68 326	74 757	23 596
LPI	68 513	74 368	5 753
Organisation	7 404	5 298	5 721
Delivery Point Address	41 237	15 780	12 804
Application Cross Ref.	225 943	414 146	41 019

Source data currency

The following information relates to the currency of the source data used in the creation of Epoch 108:

Data Source	Date
Royal Mail PAF	18 January 2024
National Land and Property Gazetteer	18 January 2024
One Scotland Gazetteer	18 December 2023
VOA Non-Domestic Rates	14 January 2024
VOA Council Tax	14 January 2024
OS MasterMap Topography Layer	09 January 2024
OS MasterMap Highways Network	08 January 2024
Code-Point with Polygons	04 January 2024
Boundary-Line	03 October 2023

Data issues

AddressBase Plus issues

Affected output formats: CSV and GML

• There are 6 781 Unique Property Reference Numbers (UPRNs) which reference a Parent UPRN that cannot be found in the product. This is because the Parent UPRN is either provisional or historic and is not matched to the Royal Mail Postcode Address File (PAF) or Valuation Office Agency (VOA) record, meaning that it is not included in the AddressBase Plus product as per the existing background logic rules.

• There are 279 records with a sao_start_no or sao_text that have no Parent UPRN in the product. This is because the Parent UPRN is a historical record which is included as part of the logic for record inclusion in the AddressBase Plus products.

Improvements in Epoch 108

Valuation Office Agency matching

The match rates for Council Tax and Non-Domestic Rates for Epoch 108 are detailed as follows based on Valuation Office Agency (VOA) records up to 15 January 2024. The match rate is applicable to the AddressBase Premium product.

Data Source	Records Received	% Matched
Council tax	27 021 839	99.92
Non-domestic rates	2 127 215	96.36

Tertiary classifications

Work is being undertaken to improve the classifications of records within the AddressBase products. This work has resulted in 49 778 more tertiary classifications present in Epoch 108 compared to Epoch 107. Indeed, 88.78% of these tertiary classification improvements are against residential codes.

PAF matching

The following graph shows the number of Postcode Address File (PAF) matched records in AddressBase by epoch:

The number of Postcode Address File (PAF) matched records in AddressBase by epoch. The number of PAF matched records in AddressBase has increased steadily over time, from 30 256 908 in Epoch 99 to 30 519 002 in Epoch 108.

Notification of Epoch 109’s Improvement in Historic BLPU State Code Completeness and Large Release Size

Summary

The release will enhance clarity and consistency of lifecycle representation within product.

A conformance improvement will be delivered for BLPU State attribute for records where the BLPU Logical Status is 8 (historic) and BLPU State is null; for increased completeness, BLPU State Code will be populated with value 4 (no longer existing) and date stamped for the change applied.

Issue description

The BLPU state identifies the current lifecycle stage of a property (or object) and is additional to the mandatory LOGICAL_ STATUS field.

BLPU State Code Enumeration

The BLPU code is an optional attribute for Local Authority Custodians to complete and therefore this attribute may be NULL in product.

An improvement to the completeness of the BLPU State Code was identified as a quality enhancement for lifecycle information as values for BLPU state code 4 can be accurately inferred from a Logical Status of 8. This will allow the data to be interpreted more easily by removing conflict between addresses with a historic logical status and no BLPU state.

All nations within GB and the Islands product regions will benefit from this improvement, as such, it will impact approximately 1.2 million records for a Full Supply.

Impact

This quality improvement will be delivered in the next release, Epoch 109, and will mean a larger than usual supply of changes.

No special action will be required to load the release differently.

Next release

The next release of AddressBase products, Epoch 109, is scheduled for Tuesday 05 April 2024.