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National Postcodes to be introduced
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Some change occurs in hierarchical systems like the UK postcode, but it is minimised and not anything like the wholesale change that some people here are predicting.
Up to 1990, the AB postcode area included five districts (AB1, AB2, AB3, AB4, AB5) that covered Aberdeen city and surrounding areas.
This was completely changed from 1990 and sub-divided (and extended) into many more districts.
All of the Aberdeen postcodes were changed from, for example, AB1 1AA to either AB10, AB11 (or AB1x) or AB2 2ZZ to AB25 (or AB2x) depending on their exact location.
In addition several postcode districts in adjoining postcode areas were incorporated into new postcode districts within the expanded AB postcode area.
For example, several IV postcode districts were abolished and the addresses in those districts became part of the AB38 postcode district.
The cost and disruption to businesses was huge especially when you consider that most businesses still had printed letterheads and other printed stationary (which was generally produced by professional printers rather than using office equipment) and that many business databases were still largely in printed form (e.g. phone directories, Kompass business directories) back then.
Apart from that wholesale postcode reorganisation of an entire city and surrounding counties, there have also been wholesale changes made to postcodes on the Wirral peninsula (a very heavily populated area across the River Mersey from Liverpool) which went from having L (for Liverpool) postcodes to CH (for Chester) postcodes some years ago.Also, the fact is that Eircodes will change whenever An Post changes its routing key areas. That might not happen for a few years, but nobody can say now, that it won;t happen.
[sarcasm]TBTG that would never happen under a hierarchical postcode system, like that used in the UK:[/sarcasm]The Outer Hebrides were completely re-coded in 1995, creating the new postcode area HS. The islands had previously had a PA postcode.
http://www.geograph.org.uk/article/Postal-address-history-and-photo-album/2
Here are some more examples of wholesale, definitely not minimised, changes that have occurred in the hierarchical UK postcode system....postcodes have changed in all sorts of ways, major and minor, since the first national scheme was completed. Here are a few of the more major examples:
The Outer Hebrides were completely re-coded in 1995, creating the new postcode area HS. The islands had previously had a PA postcode.
The AB area was given an increase in capacity by re-coding the original codes AB1 to AB5. These were given two digit numbers, AB1 becoming AB1x and AB2 becoming AB2x, etc. The SO and CF areas have been similarly altered, too, as have parts of several others.
The Wirral peninsula has been moved from L to CH, without changing any further digits.
http://www.geograph.org.uk/article/Postal-address-history-and-photo-album/2
Apart from changes to postcodes the entire Royal Mail PAF database of all UK postal addresses was changed from 1996 to 2000 when postal counties (the boundaries of which didn't necessarily correspond exactly to the boundaries of either pre-1974 or post-1974 local authority boundaries) were abolished by Royal Mail.The postal counties of the United Kingdom, now known officially as the former postal counties, were postal subdivisions in routine use by Royal Mail until 1996.[1] The raison d'être of the postal county – as opposed to any other kind of county – was to aid the sorting of mail by enabling differentiation between like-sounding post towns. Since 1996 this has been done by using the outward code (first half) of the postcode instead. For operational reasons the former postal counties, although broadly based on the counties of the United Kingdom, did not match up to their boundaries, in some cases with significant differences. The boundaries changed over time as post towns were created or amended.
According to the Royal Mail, the former postal county data no longer forms part of postal addresses. It was removed from the Postcode Address File database in 2000 and does not form part of its code of practice for changing addresses.[2] Despite this, county data is routinely sold to companies, ostensibly in order for them to cleanse their own address data. As the former postal county data was the last to be in routine use, some organisations have continued to use this obsolete data as part of postal addresses. In 2009 the Royal Mail code of practice consultation included discussion of the possibility of replacing the currently supplied 'alias data' with an up-to-date county information data field.[3] In 2010 the regulator advised Royal Mail to cease supply of county data altogether,[4] and a timetable has been put in place for this to occur between 2013 and 2016.[5]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_counties_of_the_United_Kingdom
So there have been major changes to entire Scottish postcode areas (including the city of Aberdeen and surrounding areas, and the creation of a completely new postcode area - HS), major changes to entire English and Welsh postcode areas (including the city of Southampton and surrounding areas and the city of Cardiff and surrounding areas) and changes to large parts of other English postcode areas, while the entire postal address database was changed in 2000 to remove former postal counties (which had been changed after 1974, with many exceptions, including all of Scotland!) from postal addresses.
Wholesale enough for ya?
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Here is the context. The other posters was raising the point about people being confused. My reference to Shannon Airport was illustrating that, with current Eircode, the difference between what people think their address and their postal address is causing confusion.
It's nothing to do with 'the current Eircode'. The postal address of Shannon Airport has been Limerick for many years. The only reason that this has become known to the general public recently is because people have been able to input part of the address to find its Eircode(s) and the Eircode finder website shows its correct postal address.
The fact that the correct postal address for Shannon Airport includes Limerick has generated a bit of media attention and thus brought it to public attention.
Had the internet been available to the general public for looking up addresses and postcodes in 1974, when Gatwick Airport was located geographically in West Sussex but was in the postal county of Surrey according to Royal Mail, I've no doubt that this 'relocation' of Gatwick Airport to the 'wrong county' would have become widely reported in the media.
As far back as the 19th century, many addresses in Ireland and the UK have been formatted as follows:
Street Name
Village
Via Postal Town
Postal County
Or perhaps more clearly:
11 Main Street
Mullaghmore
via Bundoran
Co. Donegal
Even though Mullaghmore is geographically located within Co. Sligo.
Why?Because the post towns had developed according to the efficiencies of mail delivery, there are many, many instances where a locality comes under a post town in a neighbouring county. If a town is close to the boundary, it will probably be the nearest town for parts of the next county and it would not make sense to deliver mail from within the 'correct' county when there is a sorting office so close by over the border. Therefore, the vast majority of county boundaries feature some kind of discrepancy
http://www.geograph.org.uk/article/Postal-address-history-and-photo-album
The fact that the address format of Street, Village, via Post Town, Postal County largely fell out of use is neither here nor there - it has been the correct postal address since the 19th century and neither the introduction of postcodes nor eircodes have changed that.Can’t speak for other posters, but that’s not the position I’ve been arguing.
I didn't say it was and I wasn't replying to you when I made that point.My contention is that UK postcodes can, on visual inspection, give useful information of where locations are with reference to each other. My source: years of using them to just that.
And therein lies the problem. You have years of using them.
You've claimed that a visual inspection of UK postcodes gives useful information about where locations are with reference to each other. By 'where locations are with reference to each other' I presume you don't mean something as trivial as 'postcode location A is relatively close to postcode location B' but something more useful such as 'postcode location A is roughly north of postcode location B'.
And presumably this ability to figure out where locations are relative to each other by visual inspection of postcodes applies even if I don't have years of using UK postcodes.
Presumably all I need to know is how UK postcodes are formatted and I can use deductive reasoning and visual inspection to figure out the rest.
That might hold water if every postcode area were subdivided into postal districts in the same manner and if every postal district were subdivided into sectors in the same manner.
Imagine if every postcode area had its postal districts numbered using the same pattern.
For example, the first postal district (always numbered 0) might always be in the top left 'corner' of the postcode area (for NI that would mean that BT0 would roughly be the western side of Derry city), for the parts of Co. Durham that use DH postcodes it would mean that DH0 would be in rural Co. Durham, to the west of Consett, with the following districts up to a maximum of 9 (e.g BT9, DH9 - if it existed) centred roughly along the same lateral axis, giving us XX0 to XX9 in a row.
Below XX0 to XX9 you'd have XX10 to XX19 and so on until you reached XX99.
Something like this:
XX0 | XX1 | XX2 | XX3 | XX4 | XX5 | XX6 | XX7 | XX8 | XX9
____________________________________________________________
XX10|XX11|XX12|XX13| XX14| XX15 |XX16|XX17|XX18 |XX19
_____________________________________________________________
XX20|XX21|XX22|XX23| XX24 | XX25 |XX26 |XX27|XX28|XX29
and so on.
We can then add some rules to this pattern.
The top row of postal district numbers would be reserved for postal districts that had no other postal districts within the same postcode area above them, the second row of postal districts is reserved for postal districts with one other row of postal districts above them, the third row for postal districts with two other rows of postal districts above them and so on.
Each row of postal districts doesn't have to use all available numbers, just as many numbers as there are postal districts in that row and postal district numbers for postal districts in the second and subsequent rows are always aligned with the postal district number in the row above. For example a postal district which is in the row below postal district XX9 is always numbered XX19, the one below XX19 is always numbered XX29 etc, even where this leads to gaps in the numbering sequence - if there's no postal district underneath (roughly to the south) a postal district then the number for the 'missing' postal district isn't assigned.
The number for a postal district below where there is ambiguity about how many postal districts are roughly to its north in the row above (for example, Durham central postal district has Chester Le Street West and Chester Le Street East roughly to its north in the row above) should always be taken from the western postal district. So if Chester Le Street West is DH2, then Durham central would be DH22.
But since all postcode areas are not configured in the same manner (a method that could still be used even if a postcode area were sub-divided into only 9 postal districts, like the DH postcode area) I can't figure out the relative position of DHx to DHz without prior knowledge of the DH postcode area or without looking up the DH postcode area on a map.
If there was a consistent pattern for sub-dividing postcode areas into postal districts along the lines suggested above, I would be able to figure out by visual inspection that DH0 is the western most postal district in the DH postcode area and that DH5 is to the east of DH0, with DH1, DH2, DH3 and DH4 in between from west to east in that order, like so:
West >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>East
First (top) Row:
DH0 | DH1 | DH2 | DH3 | DH4 | DH5 |
_____________________________________________________
Second Row:
DH10 |---|DH12|
_____________________________________________________
Third Row:
--- | --- | DH22 |
And I wouldn't need a map or any prior knowledge of the DH postcode area to figure it out because every postcode area would have its postal districts numbered in the same pattern as set out in the top table (the 'XX' table) above.
If that were true, then visual inspection alone would work.
But since the DH postcode area has its postal districts numbered in a different pattern to the pattern that the AB postcode area's postal districts are numbered (see maps below), how can I tell by visual inspection of the postcodes that DH is actually to the west of DH1?
Let's assume that I didn't have any prior knowledge of the DH postcode area or any access to a map of the DH postcode area.
Could I figure out the relative positions of DH6 and DH8 with respect to DH1 by using clues from the structure of the AB postcode area?
Unfortunately not, because the AB postcode area doesn't contain postal districts numbered below 10 (i.e. it begins with AB10).
So we can't figure out how one postcode area's postal district numbers are patterened from looking at another postcode area or from our knowledge of how UK postcodes are structured or from visual inspection of the postcodes, because each postcode area, whether its AB or DG or DH or HR (see maps below), can have its own pattern for numbering postal districts which doesn't necessarily reflect the pattern applied to the numbering of postal districts within other postcode areas.
What about figuring out how Scotland is sub-divided into postal districts purely from visual cues, based on our knowledge of how Northern Ireland is sub-divided into postal districts? Without any prior knowledge of Scottish postcodes, without any map, we should be able to deduce the rough structure of Scottish postcodes from the postcodes in Northern Ireland.
So we'd assume (being creatures of logic) that the lesser populated parts of the UK may be similar to each other in their postcode structures.
Armed with this logical assumption, we could assume that since Northern Ireland has only one postcode area (BT) that Scotland too may have only one postcode area.
We know that NI's postcode is derived from the name of its capital, Belfast.
Knowing that Edinburgh is the capital of Scotland we assume that Scotland is divided into one postcode area, EH.
And that Wales is divided into one postcode area, CF for Cardiff.
But we're wrong. How do we know we're wrong? Either through prior knowledge or by checking a map...
We can't use visual cues from the postcodes alone to figure out how Scotland or Wales are sub-divided, even if we already know how NI is sub-divided.
So we can't rely on visual inspection to figure out whether NI's use of a single postcode area (BT) applies to other regions of the UK (e.g. Wales, Scotland) because the way that the BT postcode area is applied to all of NI is unique and isn't replicated for Scotland or Wales or for regions of England (e.g. NE is not used across all of the North-East of England).
And we can't rely on visual inspection to figure out the relative positions of postal districts within different postcode areas. Because each postcode area has numbered its postal districts according to different patterns (e.g. AB is different from DG which is different from DH which is different from HR etc etc).
And we can't rely on visual inspection to figure out how sectors within postal districts are located relative to each other because each postal district may have its sectors numbered in a different pattern to other postal districts (e.g. numbered sectors within AB11 may have a different pattern to sectors within DH1).As I said previously even if you grant that UK postcodes are poor, doesn’t the fact that they outperform Eircode on this aspect not at least cause a double-take?
In what sense do they outperform Eircode in this aspect? Can you figure out the relative location of DH1 with respect to DH8 and DH6 without having prior knowledge of how the DH postcode area is configured into its postal districts or without looking up the DH postcode area on a map?
Can you figure out the relative location of DL13 4 to DL13 3 and DH8 0 without looking up the information on a map? How is one postcode system which requires either prior knowledge or checking of maps better than another system which requires either prior knowledge or checking of maps?I don’t understand the questions
Evidently.and I think you’ve missed the thrust of the objections to Eircode here. For me, the UK postcode visually contains useable information in all of its digits
For you. But you have 'years of using them' including no doubt years of checking maps. What's usable about the sector code in the postcode B6 5NE if you can't be sure where sector 5 is in relation to sectors 6 and 7 (e.g. B6 6AA, B6 7ZB), or where B6 is in relation to B7 or B8 without years of experience in using UK postcodes or without looking them up on a map?
Look at this map of central AB postal districts which includes some sectors within those districts:
If I look at AB15 I can see that AB15 6 is to the north of AB15 7. And if I look at AB10 I can see that AB10 6 is north of AB10 7. Logically then, AB15 4 should be north of AB15 6 (I'm assuming that the rule is that the lower the sector number, the further north it is within the postal district).
But AB15 4 is actually south of AB15 6 and AB15 8 is north of AB15 4 and AB15 7.
So what is the rule for the numbering of postal sectors within the AB15 postal district?
Is there a rule that's consistent even within individual postal districts (e.g. AB15), let alone across different postal districts within the same postcode area (e.g. AB10 and AB15), let alone different postal districts within different postcode areas?
For example, can I be sure that DL9 8 is going to be north of DL9 9 if DH9 8 is north of DH9 9?
I don't think so.
All you can be sure of is that B6 5 is somewhere relatively close to B6 6, although, as we've seen with the DL13 4 and DL13 3 postcodes, even sectors within the same postal district might be further apart from each other than they are from postcodes in neighbouring postcode areas.
Given that I can be sure that any eircode within the D01 routing key area is relatively close to any other eircode that's also within the D01 area, I don't really see what's so amazing about UK postcodes in this respect. I mean is it that hard to guess that B6 6XX is relatively close to B6 5XX or that D01 XXXX is relatively close to D01 XXZZ? Or that P32 XXXX is relatively close to P32 XXZZ?
But what about AB38 5XX you say? Isn't it easier to guess from visual inspection that it's relatively close to AB39 5XX than it is to guess from visual inspection where P32 XXXX is in relation to P32 XXZZ? You'd think it would be, but have a closer look at the AB postcode area map. AB39 is separated from AB38 by about 70 miles, because the position of the AB39 postal district doesn't follow the internal logic by which the AB postcode area is sub-divided into postal districts. All AB39 postcodes are separated from all AB38 postcodes by roughly 60 - 70 miles, a fact which I can't know simply by visual inspection of postcodes.
If I can't even trust the internal logic of one postcode area (which in any case is nearly always different from the internal logic of other postcode areas) then how can I confidently predict the relative positions of two postcodes even if they're within the same postcode area?
Even when they're in the same postal district (e.g. DL13) and have adjacent sector numbers (e.g. DL13 3 and DL13 4) I can't be sure from visual inspection whether one is nearer to the other than it is to an unrelated postcode (e.g. DH8 0AA). I can make a guess but, as we've already seen, that guess might be wrong even at the 'as the crow flies' level.The bit you are missing is that, in a sense, NI is already divided up into smaller areas. There are 82 large areas (BT1, BT2, etc.). For each of those the further digits of the postcode the area is subdivided into smaller areas. With Eircode only the first three digits, the routing key, does any subdividing.
And what has that got to do with my point that BT does not have any local connection with Co. Fermanagh in the way that AB does partly with Aberdeen(shire)? My point was about the relationship (or lack of it) of the BT postcode area to the existing names of counties and local areas within Northern Ireland with which their inhabitants may have pre-existing sentimental attachments.Imagine, for a moment, the postcode was changed to a proper geocode – you’d never have to make any changes. Well, if you factor in erosion, continental drift, etc., you might have to make a small tweak in a hundred thousand years, but I think that’s acceptable.
UK postcodes aren't geocodes. They weren't designed as such. I can't think of any national postcodes that were designed as geocodes. I can't think of any cars that were designed to go to the moon. What's your point? That postcodes aren't geocodes? We already know that.0 -
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