141–150 of 317 posts
For comparison, in the Netherlands all postcode data is open data, including detailed building outlines as well as almost all other related information. See https://app.pdok.nl/viewer for most datasets.
This creates a very special Dutch thing —- my neighborhood had the roads on the map before the map itself was updated to show landmass instead of the body of water.
As he points out, this was a profoundly stupid mistake made when privatising Royal Mail. It would have been trivially easy to do at that point, but now it's a lot harder. If the government decided that it does want to do this, it can't just pass a law that says "the PAF is now free" without paying hundreds of millions of pounds in compensation to Royal Mail. That's quite apart from the ongoing costs of maintaining th…
I am a bit surprised by how hard this article makes out the problem to be. Crowdsourcing should make short work of the problem, with the right incentives, which the government will be able to offer. Additionally private map providers (e.g. Google, Apple) must surely have this data (since they are able to route navigation to private addresses). Why not just negotiate with them?
How would crowdsourcing solve this problem? > Oh, and it wouldn’t even be legally allowed to include, er, postcodes, as they are specifically owned by Royal Mail
That aside, a practical issue is that Royal Mail still retains the rights to _allocate_ new postcodes for any new properties. Yet another failure of this particular privatisation.
[0]: https://www.techdirt.com/2009/10/06/uk-royal-mail-uses-copyr...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A cautionary example of how data meets reality… My address in France is listed in the BAN… but only to the granularity of my street number (e.g., 123 Main St.). Unfortunately, that number corresponds to at least 7 different structures, 5 of which are apartment buildings. Of those 5 buildings, each has multiple stairwells with their own door and no line of communication between them—they might as well be separate buil…
This sounds like bad design by the property developer and a sloppy building authority. The first is corroborated by the lack of unit numbers. Who does such a thing? The BAN actually only tracks down to the plot level, so I assume all your structures are on the same plot. From there on it is the building authorities job to check building plans and to enter the substructures into the cadastre, where they are usually le…
As he points out, this was a profoundly stupid mistake made when privatising Royal Mail. It would have been trivially easy to do at that point, but now it's a lot harder. If the government decided that it does want to do this, it can't just pass a law that says "the PAF is now free" without paying hundreds of millions of pounds in compensation to Royal Mail. That's quite apart from the ongoing costs of maintaining th…
"without paying hundreds of millions of pounds in compensation to Royal Mail" lot less than hundreds of millions to bring it back into govt
As he points out, this was a profoundly stupid mistake made when privatising Royal Mail. It would have been trivially easy to do at that point, but now it's a lot harder. If the government decided that it does want to do this, it can't just pass a law that says "the PAF is now free" without paying hundreds of millions of pounds in compensation to Royal Mail. That's quite apart from the ongoing costs of maintaining th…
Why can't it be taken for free? The system and data was created by a publicly owned body, surely Crown copyright.
Some context, for people not located in the UK - A full British postcode typically aims to cover around 15 buildings (sometime a single building, sometimes a street of 50 houses). This is in contrast to many other postal code systems which cover relatively broad areas). Or to put it another way - UK - 2,643,732 codes, 1 code per 25 people, USA - 41,700 codes, 1 code per 8000 people, Germany - 8,200 codes, 1 code per…
Singapore - 1 code per building.
As he points out, this was a profoundly stupid mistake made when privatising Royal Mail. It would have been trivially easy to do at that point, but now it's a lot harder. If the government decided that it does want to do this, it can't just pass a law that says "the PAF is now free" without paying hundreds of millions of pounds in compensation to Royal Mail. That's quite apart from the ongoing costs of maintaining th…
Some context, for people not located in the UK - A full British postcode typically aims to cover around 15 buildings (sometime a single building, sometimes a street of 50 houses). This is in contrast to many other postal code systems which cover relatively broad areas). Or to put it another way - UK - 2,643,732 codes, 1 code per 25 people, USA - 41,700 codes, 1 code per 8000 people, Germany - 8,200 codes, 1 code per…
Singapore - 1 code per building.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How would crowdsourcing solve this problem? > Oh, and it wouldn’t even be legally allowed to include, er, postcodes, as they are specifically owned by Royal Mail
How does OpenStreetMap solve it? OSM, more specifically OSM Nominatim, shows postcodes. Example: https://www.openstreetmap.org/search?lat=53.151778&lon=-1.16...
Specifically Code-Point Open: https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/products/code-point-open which is updated quarterly, and in turn gets the postcodes from Royal Mail.