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UK postcodes are alphanumeric. These codes were introduced by the Royal Mail over a 15-year period from 1959 to 1974 — the full list is now available electronically from the Royal Mail as the Postcode Address File . They have been widely adopted not just for their original purpose of automating the sorting of mail but for many other purposes such as insurance premium calculations and as a way to describe United Kingdom locations to Route Planning Software . UK postcodes are copyrighted, there is a project to help create a free postcode system - see http://www.freethepostcode.org/ However, as the format of the codes does not achieve its objective of primarily identifying the main sorting office and sub-office they have been supplemented by a newer system of five-digit codes called Mail users who can deliver mail to the post office sorted by Mailsort code receive discounts but {Link without Title} delivery by postcode provides no such incentive. POSTCODE HISTORY The major cities of the UK have much older postcodes, now incorporated into the current system, than other areas. The first system of ten London Postal District s identified by letters (W, WC, EC etc) was devised by Sir Rowland Hill and introduced in 1857 and 1858. British Postal Museum and Archive - Information Sheet: Postcodes The numbered subdivisions (W1, W2 etc) were a war-time measure and date from 1917. The 1917 subdivisions remain important, because they form the first part of the two-part modern postcode (so N1 1AA is an address in the old N1 district), and because they continue to be used by Londoners to refer to their districts. The Post Office experimented with electromechnical sorting machines in the late 1950s. These devices would present 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.''New Scientist'', 21 July 2007, p16 In January 1959 the Post Office analysed the results of a survey on public attitudes towards the use of postal codes. The next step would be choose a town in which to experiment with coded addresses. The envisaged format was to be a six character alphanumeric code with three letters designating the geographical area and three numbers to identify the individual address.''Postal codes to speed up mail'', The Times, January 15, 1959 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.''Norwich to use postal codes - Experimenting in automation'', The Times, July 29, 1959 The codes were in the form NOR followed by three digits. In October 1965 it was confirmed that postal coding was to be extended to the rest of the country in the "next few years".''G.P.O. robot postman sorts 20,000 letters an hour'', The Times, October 5, 1965 On 1st May 1967 post codes were introduced in Croydon . The codes for central Croydon started with the letters CRO, and those of the surrounding post towns with '''CR2''', '''CR3''' and '''CR4'''. This was to be the beginning of a ten year plan, costing an estimated £24 million. Within two years it was expected that coding would be used in Aberdeen , Belfast , Brighton , Bristol , Bromley , Cardiff , Coventry , Manchester , Newcastle Upon Tyne , Newport , Reading , Sheffield , Southampton and the Western District of London.''Someone, Somewhere in postal code'', The Times, October 12, 1966 By 1967 codes had been introduced to Aberdeen, Southampton, Brighton and Derby .''Post Office plans faster service'', The Times, July 4, 1967 In 1970 codes were introduced to the Western and North West London areas.''London in brief'', The Times, September 15, 1970 In December 1970 Christmas mail was franked with the message "Remember to use the Postcode", although codes were only used to sort mail in a handful of sorting offices.''Inside the Post Office'', The Times, January 18, 1971 During 1971 occupants of addresses began to receive notification of their postcode. Asked in the House Of Commons about the completion of the coding exercise, the Postmaster General, Sir John Eden stated it was expected to be completed during 1972 .''Postal code programme'', The Times, April 20, 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. British Postal Museum & Archive's Information Sheet on the history of Postcodes - PDF Newport was originally allocated NPT, in a similar way to Norwich and Croydon, with the surrounding towns allocated '''NP1'''-'''NP8'''. This lasted into the mid 1980s when for operational reasons (NPT being non-standard, and too similar to NP7) it was recoded. The legacy of the Croydon trial can still be seen today:
FORMAT The format of UK postcodes is generally: :A9 9AA :A99 9AA :A9A 9AA :AA9 9AA :AA99 9AA :AA9A 9AA where A signifies a letter and 9 a digit. It is a hierarchical system, working from left to right — the first letter or pair of letters represents the area, the following digit or digits represent the district within that area, and so on. Each postcode generally represents a street, part of a street, or a single premises. This feature makes the postcode useful to Route Planning Software . The part of the code before the space is the ''outward code'' or ''out code'' used to direct mail from one sorting office to the destination sorting office, while the part after the space is the ''inward code'' or ''in code'' used to sort the mail into individual delivery rounds, each separate code usually identifying the address to within 80 properties (with an average of 14 properties per postal code), although a large business may have a unique code. The outward code can be split further into the ''area'' part (letters identifying one of 124 postal areas) and the ''district'' part (usually numbers); similarly, the inward code is split into the ''sector'' part (number) and the ''unit'' part (letters). The letters in the outward code may give some clue to its geographical location (but see London below). For example, ''BS'' indicates Bristol , ''G'' indicates Glasgow and ''CF'' indicates Cardiff ; ''see List Of Postcode Areas In The United Kingdom for a full list''. Although ''BT'' indicates Belfast , it covers the whole of Northern Ireland . The letters in the inward code, however, are restricted to the set ''ABDEFGHJLNPQRSTUWXYZ'' (excluding ''CIKMOV''), which generally do not resemble digits or each other when hand-written. There are at least two exceptions (other than the overseas territories) to this format:
GREATER LONDON POSTCODES See Also: London postal district In the London Postal Area postcodes are slightly different, being based on the 1856 system of Postal Districts which was refined in 1917 by numbering the 163 Sub-Districts; predating by many years the introduction of postcodes in the 1960s :
The London postal districts rarely coincide with the boundaries of the London Borough s (even the former, smaller Metropolitan Boroughs). The numbering system appears arbitrary on the map: for example, NW1 is close to central London, but NW2 is a long way out. This is because (after starting with 1 for the area containing the main sorting office) they were numbered alphabetically by the name of the main sorting office. The area covered by the London postal districts was somewhat larger than the County Of London , and included parts of Kent , Essex , Surrey , Middlesex and Hertfordshire . In 1965 the creation of Greater London caused this situation to be reversed as the boundaries of Greater London went beyond most of the existing London postal districts. Those places not covered by the existing districts received postcodes as part of the national coding plan, so the postcode areas of "EN" Enfield , "KT" Kingston Upon Thames , "HA" Harrow , "UB" Uxbridge ", "TW" Twickenham , "SM" Sutton , "CR" Croydon , "DA" Dartford , "BR" Bromley , "RM" Romford and "IG" Ilford cross administrative boundaries and cover parts of neighbouring counties as well as parts of Greater London. A further complication is that in some of the most central London areas, a further gradation has been necessary to produce enough postcodes, giving codes like EC1A 1AA. While most postcodes are allocated by administrative convenience, a few are deliberately chosen. For example in Westminster :
OTHER AREAS' POSTCODES Until the 1960s , Postal Areas such as Belfast , Birmingham , Bradford , Edinburgh , Glasgow , Leeds , Liverpool , Manchester , Salford , Newcastle Upon Tyne and Sheffield were divided into numbered Postal Districts, e.g. Toxteth in Liverpool was ''Liverpool 8''. When the national postcode system was introduced, these were incorporated into it, so that postcodes in Toxteth start with ''L8'', followed by the rest of the postcode. A similar system is still used in the Republic Of Ireland for Dublin 's Postal Districts . Some Birmingham codes were sub-divided, with a letter, such as ''Great Barr, Birmingham 22'' or ''Birmingham 22a'' 1951 will, using address in "Birmingham 22a" - as can still be seen on many older street-name signs. A single numbering sequence was split between Manchester and Salford. Letters would be addressed to Manchester 1 or Salford 4. However in the 1960s, all the districts in both Manchester and Salford gained "M" postcodes, so "Salford 4" became M4, etc., much to the chagrin of Salfordians. The old coding lives on in a handful of street signs which are still embossed with "Salford 4" etc, at the bottom. Glasgow shared with London a distinction from all other UK cities as it had compass postal districts due to its claimed status as the Second City of the British Empire, i.e., C, W, NW, N, E, S, SW, SE. When postcodes were introduced these were mapped into the new 'G' postcode area thusly: C1 became G1, W1 became G11, N1 became G21, E1 became G31, S1 became G41, SW1 became G51, and so on. VALIDATION The consequence of the complexity outlined above is that for almost every rule concerning UK postcodes, an exception can be found. Automatic validation of postcodes on the basis of pattern feasibility is therefore almost impossible to design, and the system contains no self-validating feature such as a check digit. Completely accurate validation is only possible by attempting to deliver mail to the address, and verifying with the recipient. Validation is usually performed against a copy of the " Postcode Address File " (PAF), which is generated by the Royal Mail and contains about 27 million UK commercial and residential addresses. However, even the PAF cannot be relied on as it contains errors, and because new postcodes are occasionally created and used before copies of the PAF can be distributed to users. It is possible to validate the ''format'' of a postcode using the rules defined by British Standard BS 7666 .1 In general, the format is one of "A9 9AA", "A99 9AA", "AA9 9AA", "AA99 9AA", "A9A 9AA" or "AA9A 9AA", where A is an alphabetic character and 9 is a numeric character. There are restrictions on the set of alphabetic characters dependent on the position they are in. As can be seen, the first character is always alphabetical and the final three characters are always a numeric character followed by two alphabetic characters. A Regular Expression to implement the BS 7666 rules in a basic fashion is provided in the BS7666 schema:2 [0-9 [A-Z-[CIKMOV]]{2} A more complex regular expression is also given in the comments of the schema, which implements full checking of all the stated BS 7666 postcode format rules. That regular expression can be restated as a "traditional" regular expression: |
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