I don't keep up with Talk-GB as much as I ought to, so I didn't notice
this thread when I started this import proposal. Hopefully we can rely
on the assumption that it's probably safe, as ONS have been doing this
for a while now (the November 2025 release appears to be the 122nd).
If Royal Mail or Ordnance Survey decide that ONS weren't actually
allowed to release the data under OGLv3, all added postcodes from these
imports are tagged with source:addr:postcode=ONSUD;OS Open UPRN or
source:postal_code=ONSUD;OS following Ken Kilfedder's suggestion on the
import's talk page.
https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/proposed-import-of-uk-postcodes-and-uprns-england-wales/137106
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Import_of_UK_postcodes_and_UPRNs_(England_%26_Wales)
On 15/10/2025 14:09, Owen Boswarva wrote:
This is the post in which I raised concerns about ONS's use of postcodes
in its UPRN products (ONSUD and NSUL):
Open data: are ONS's address data products legal? https://
www.owenboswarva.com/blog/post-addr10.htm <https://
www.owenboswarva.com/blog/post-addr10.htm>
That analysis is partly based on correspondence with ONS in which its
explanation for relying on PSGA and OGL terms to append postcodes to
UPRNs didn't quite line up with my understanding of Ordnance Survey's
Open Identifiers Policy.
In practice this is mainly a technical concern – as OS has acquiesced
for a number of years to ONS's use of postcodes, I don't think it is
likely to raise a stink now (or at least not with retroactive effect).
I am less relaxed about postcodes in local Council Tax address datasets.
As CJ has noted, Leeds removed postcodes from its published address list
– this followed from correspondence with OS re Royal Mail's IP rights.
Since then several other councils have released their Council Tax
address lists to me, with permission to re-use the data under OGL, and I
have been posting geocoded versions on my blog. Usually the CT lists has
included postcodes, without any caveat about Royal Mail restrictions,
but as I am not always confident that council staff understand licensing
issues I have been replacing those with postcodes from ONS's UPRN products.
-- Owen Boswarva
On Wed, 15 Oct 2025 at 11:51, Cj Malone <me-osm-talk-
[email protected] <mailto:me-osm-talk-
[email protected]>> wrote:
On Wed, 2025-10-15 at 10:35 +0100, SK53 wrote:
> I think Owen Boswarva has expressed doubts as to whether the NSUL
> dataset
> from ONS is truly open data (notwithstanding the OGL licence). IIRC
> this is
> because it is not clear how the association of UPRN to postcode is
> constructed, and a risk that this involves use of non-open data.
Owen also got Leeds City Council to release addresses, the first
dataset included postcodes from the Leeds City Council. A day after
Owens blog post Leeds took the dataset down, and re uploaded without
the postcodes. The ONS dataset has been around for years with plenty of
users, the data would have been taken down by now if it was not usable.
https://www.owenboswarva.com/blog/post-addr9.htm <https://
www.owenboswarva.com/blog/post-addr9.htm>
Also Owen has taked about a 77m case where 77m downloaded a dataset
labelled as OGL from the government, but OS later claimed to have
rights over the data and that it wasn't OGL. The court said OGL applied
to the data and it's not 77m responsibility to validate that one
government body has the authority to release a dataset.
https://www.owenboswarva.com/blog/post-77m1.htm <https://
www.owenboswarva.com/blog/post-77m1.htm>
CJ
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