End of Life Notice – AddressBase Plus Islands
The End of Life notice for the AddressBase Plus Islands product, containing key dates, the reasoning behind the product withdrawal and product migration guidance.
Overview
The AddressBase Plus Islands product will become End of Life on 29 November 2027. As of this date, OS will cease to maintain or publish updates to the product.
Key dates
Final publication of the product: Exact date TBC; expected October / November 2027 (Epoch cycle TBC)
Full withdrawal date: 29 November 2027
Why is this happening?
As part of our strategic product roadmap, OS is committed to the evolution of geospatial data and services in order to meet customers’ needs and use cases. Through the Public Sector Geospatial Agreement (PSGA), OS continuously delivers enhancements to the OS National Geographic Database (OS NGD) to provide new, richer data across all market sectors. We’ve improved usability by providing customers with access to the latest OS NGD data enhancements via new systems (the OS Data Hub and APIs) rather than via older and less efficient mechanisms. As a result, some of our existing products will become out of date and reach the end of their life.
The following factors were major drivers behind the decision to withdraw this product:
Declining usage: Usage of the AddressBase Plus Islands product has been declining, with most use cases now met by other OS products, namely the Islands Address Collection of the OS NGD; continued support of the AddressBase Plus Islands product is therefore no longer maintainable.
OS product consolidation: The withdrawal of AddressBase Plus Islands is part of a broader initiative to streamline and consolidate our product offering, ensuring our products are sustainable and better aligned with current and future customer needs. AddressBase Plus Islands is in the third set of OS MasterMap Premium Download products to become End of Life, and we're actively working to migrate existing customers to the OS NGD.
We understand this change will impact customers, and we are committed to providing guidance and support to facilitate a smooth migration to OS NGD.
What's the product migration path?
We recommend you migrate to the Islands Address Collection of the OS NGD Address Theme as it contains data that enables you to access Local Authority address information, Unique Property Reference Numbers (UPRNs) and premium attribution.
The update frequency for AddressBase Plus Islands product is 6-weekly (Epoch cycle); whereas it's up-to-daily for the Islands Address Collection, providing customers with a current and accurate view of Local Authority addresses and third-party data.
Existing AddressBase Plus Islands customers are able to, under dual-running terms, access and use the data contained within the Islands Address Collection during the remaining length of their contract to facilitate their migration over to the OS NGD.
AddressBase Plus Islands content is available in the Islands Address Collection. We advise customers looking to replicate the content found in AddressBase Plus Islands to review the Comparison of End of Life Address Products page for more information, then use OS Select+Build on the OS Data Hub to order the OS NGD addressing feature types most relevant and applicable to their use cases. (OS Select+Build is the download service for OS NGD that lets you create your own customised data packages.)
What are the benefits to using Islands Address Collection data?
Data is accessed through the OS Data Hub and is available to download from OS Select+Build in two widely adopted and simple to use formats – GeoPackage and CSV (comma-separated values).
AddressBase Plus Islands contains current properties using addresses sourced from Local Authorities, OS and Royal Mail for Northern Ireland, Isle of Man and the Channel Islands; it contains all current addresses validated from Local Custodians, and non-postal addresses (such as ponds, electricity sub-stations and telephone boxes) are also included. The Islands Address Collection contains this information in an easy to implement format by componentising records by lifecycle stage.
The Islands Address Collection receives up-to-daily updates to Local Authority and Postcode Address File (PAF) records, providing you with a current view of addresses (in contrast, the update frequency for AddressBase Plus Islands is 6-weekly).
The simplified data model for the OS NGD means there’s no need to be an addressing expert to use the data. Componentised by lifecycle stage, OS NGD Address data allows you to take only the records contained within the feature types you're interested in (which in this case will be the Built Address, Historic Address and Pre-Build Address Feature Types).
Plug and play – OS NGD data is simple and quick to implement as you don't need to pre-process it before you use it.
Rich attribution ensures OS NGD data is straightforward to navigate and query, with classification codes now transformed into plain English for ease of interpretation and application.
Persistent unique identifiers with lifecycle information are available in the OS NGD; the UPRN allows you to traverse across the OS NGD themes and unlock value across the database.
You can easily identify and download addresses by their pre-build, built and historic lifecycle stages.
There's clear lifecycle attribution for addresses:
The Build Status attribute gives you a description of the build status of an address (i.e. Built Complete, Built Unoccupiable, Historic or Prebuild).
The Address Status attribute indicates the lifecycle stage of an address (i.e. Alternative, Approved, Historical or Provisional).
There's a single line address field that combines the key Local Authority address attribution into a single field and removes the need for you to compile this information from multiple different fields.
Up to quaternary level classifications and descriptions are available from feature types in the collection.
Alternative addresses are available where:
There is a variation of an official address that is held by a Local Authority
An alternative language representation of an address
Additional non-official address captured for lifecycle purposes
Cross-references make it easy for you to link data from the Islands Address Collection through the UPRN with data from other OS NGD collections, such as buildings and land use sites and other third-party data sets.
Further information
This page will be updated periodically with additional support documentation, including specific migration guidance and FAQ answers to support your migration:
Comparison of End of Life Address Products – This page provides a technical summary of things to consider when migrating from AddressBase Plus Islands to the OS NGD's Islands Address Collection. It covers data supply, ordering and formats; currency; unique identifiers, and provides a comparison of the attribution of the two products.
Reach out to our support team if you have any concerns or questions.
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