Open data and mapping – an idea
9th January 2012
Just before Christmas we had an email pop into our Digital Birmingham inbox. It was from somebody who is setting up their own business in Birmingham. They asked us
“I was wondering if Birmingham City Council has a comprehensive list of the city centre postcodes so I could easily upload this to the admin area of my website, so when the customer places an order this will be accepted/rejected depending on the postcode.”
I asked Stuart Lester from Service Birmingham if he had any thoughts about how we might help. It turns out that the city does have up to date postcode data, but that is licensed to the Royal Mail. However, the Ordnance Survey have released their CodePoint® postcode file under an Open Government licence.
Bingo!
Now, I’ve seen that on the Right Move website you can draw a polygon around the area that you are interested in and the site will search for properties in this area. I wondered if anybody had used CodePoint data to create a mapping tool where you could draw a polygon and have a list of all the Postcodes it covers created for you.
I thought that this would solve the problem that we had been asked to help with, but also that it would be a really useful general service.
I asked on Twitter if this had already been done. Disappointingly, people said not. However, quite a number of people thought it was a good idea. Some people even said it was something that they might do.
Stuart Harrison, from Lichfield has said he might develop something and put it on his UK Postcodes site. Sym Roe from @1010 said that he had been thinking about developing something like this. And Ian Holt, from Ordnance Survey has also offered his help; thanks to John Goodwin for forwarding the request on.
So, despite having done nothing much except potentially get other people to do some work, I feel it’s been a productive morning. If and when the idea becomes a service, I’ll be sure to post something here.
Hi,
I was inspired by your post (and the Twitter discussion) to have a go at this. I’ve put together a demonstration tool based on Google Maps API / Ajax / Code-Point Open:
http://www.owenboswarva.com/postcodes/
– Owen Boswarva ( @owenboswarva )
Hi Owen
Thank you – this is pretty much exactly what I had in mind when I was thinking how to answer this request. It’s a really useful tool and I’ll pass it on to the person who made the initial enquiry.