Code-Point Open
Here you will find all documentation for the Code-Point Open product.
An open dataset of all the current postcode units in Great Britain. For each postcode, Code-Point Open provides a positional quality indicator (PQI), country code, NHS area code along with local government county, district, and ward codes.
Locate your analysis
Link any dataset that includes postcode data to the postcode location in a GIS and build up a spatial picture of your data.
Link statistical and numeric datasets to your postcode data
Using ONS administrative unit codes and NHS health authority code attributes in each postcode.
Additional attributes
To give you extra analytical power, Code-Point Open includes NHS authority and administrative unit codes.
Authoritative data
Code-Point Open provides accurate coverage of the 1.7 million postcodes in Great Britain. The product is updated quarterly.
Code-Point Open can be used to display and analyse any data collected at the postcode level. The product can be used in variety of applications, including:
Site location
Enabling web searches
Market analysis and profiling
Health and epidemiology
Resource allocation
End-to-end journey route planning
Socio-economic profiling
Sales targeting
Access: Download
Data theme: Administrative and Statistical Units
Data structure: Vector – Points
Coverage: Great Britain
Scale: 1:1 250 to 1:10 000
Format: CSV, GeoPackage
Ordering area: All of Great Britain
Publication months: February, May, August, November
Northern Ireland coverage
Northern Ireland postcodes aren’t included in Code-Point Open, but they are present in Code-Point.
Code-Point accuracy and resolution
Code-Point is created by taking the average of the coordinates of all the individual addresses in a postcode (provided we have any of sufficient quality), then snapping to the nearest of those addresses. Code-Point then delivers the coordinates of that address, as representative of the whole postcode, to a resolution of 1metre.
The accuracy of a Code-Point Open record could be expressed as, that the coordinated position will always be within the notional geographical extent of the postcode. The accuracy of each postcode unit coordinate pair is defined by the positional quality indicator (PQI) which provides a quality statement of a Code-Point record.
How to get this product
Access to this OS OpenData product is free through the OS Data Hub.
What's next?
To access documentation and resources relating to this product, please refer to the following:
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