Product supply

Available formats

Code-Point Open is available in the following formats:

• Comma-separated values (CSV)

• GeoPackage (GPKG)

Supply mechanism

Code-Point Open is only available as national cover of Great Britain. The product is supplied in two formats (CSV and GeoPackage) as an online download from the OS Data Hub.

The product is provided as a complete resupply. Any postcode that is deleted between supplies will not be included.

Product update schedule

Code-Point Open is supplied to customers quarterly (in February, May, August, and November), incorporating updates from georeferenced Royal Mail Postcode Address File (PAF) and GridLink. GridLink is a joint consortium dataset that provides geospatially referenced postcode data, consisting of UK postcodes, administration areas and health authority codes. The GridLink Consortium comprises Royal Mail, Ordnance Survey, the Office for National Statistics (ONS), Land & Property Services (LPS), and National Records of Scotland (NRS). Each consortium member supplies component data to create the GridLink dataset.

Administrative and health authority codes are allocated to postcodes using a point in polygon comparison against Boundary-Line data.

Coverage and file sizes

Code-Point Open covers postcodes for Great Britain.

The approximate file sizes of the respective data formats are as follows:

• CSV: 153MB

• GeoPackage: 257MB

Code-Point Open data structure

CSV

The Code-Point Open CSV format contains two folders in the root directory: Doc and Data The Doc folder contains the following files:

• Codelist.xlsx – Lookup table of Government Statistical Service (GSS) codes.

• Code-Point_Open_Column_Headers.csv – Description of column headers.

• licence.txt – Important licence information.

• metadata.txt – Number of postcode units in each postcode area.

• NHS_Codelist.xls – Lookup table of health GSS codes.

• readme.txt – Summary of supplied data.

The Data folder contains the following sub-folder:

• CSV – 120 postcode area files in CSV format.

GeoPackage

The Code-Point Open GeoPackage format contains the following text file in the root directory:

• Readme.txt – Summary of supplied data And two folders: Doc and Data

The Doc folder contains the following files:

• Codelist.xlsx – Lookup table of GSS codes.

• Code-Point_Open_Column_Headers.csv – Description of column headers.

• Licence.txt – Important licence information.

• Metadata.txt – Number of postcode units in each postcode area.

• NHS_Codelist.xls – Lookup table of health GSS codes The Data folder contains the following file:

  • Codepo_gb.gpkg – One postcode area file in GeoPackage format.