On 8 Apr , at 23:48:03, Matthew Somerville wrote:

> Matthew Somerville wrote:
>> Sure, it's almost certainly good enough (it's how WriteToThem works, after 
>> all), but it just wasn't what was asked for, is all :-)
> 
> Sorry, I should clarify that. Postcode areas and admin boundaries aren't 
> really linked at all, so if you take a particular lat/lon, it's quite possible

quite possible, but also very rare, no? don't we have stats on that?

> the closest postal centroid could be in a different ward/council, and so for 
> an accurate point lookup you need to do point-in-polygon test. That's how 
> FixMyStreet functions. It's possible a postcode area straddles a ward 
> boundary, but in the main, for addresses, a postcode lookup will be enough. 
> So it really depends what you're doing, as with anything.
> 

I think you're worrying the patients unnecessarily, Matthew. 

Back in the day at upmystreet, we found that the number of complaints (maybe 
5/month) of "hey, you've got the wrong council for my postcode" that were user 
error greatly exceeded those that were actually wrong, and we were doing 
*millions* of matches per month.


> ATB,
> Matthew
> 
>> Mark Goodge wrote:
>>> On 08/04/2010 16:43, Matthew Somerville wrote:
>>>> Harrison, Stuart wrote:
>>>>> http://www.uk-postcodes.com/latlng/{lat},{lng}
>>>>> Should do what you want it to do :)
>>>> 
>>>> Isn't that actually the council for the closest postcode to that lat/lon
>>>> though, which isn't precisely what's asked for.
>>> 
>>> It might be good enough, though, if postcode areas never (or very rarely) 
>>> cross ward boundaries. And, given that full postcode areas are fairly 
>>> small, that shouldn't be very common if it happens at all. Or is it too 
>>> common for that to be reliable?
> 
> 
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