Talk:List of postcode districts in the United Kingdom

message: This list is terribly out of date - it contains lots of postcodes that have been changed since 1998. It contains an odd mix of postal and wrong traditional counties, and contains postcodes that have never existed such as B41 (Yes I know the original Birmingham 41 district covered Smethwick, but that was superceded by B66 et al.) Owain 19:40, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: OK, it's just that a lot of postcode areas don't have contiguous blocks of district numbers any more, so maybe all tha n/as could be grouped into one big n/a per postcode area... Owain 09:34, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Comments

message: Does YO95 mean anything to anyone?  http://www.streetmap.co.uk shows a place near Pocklington and it appears in a Department for Work and Pensions pdf list  but, otherwise, it seems a bit obscure.  --Cavrdg 14:55, 31 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: It's a non-geographic code isn't it? Looks like streetmap is playing up. Pocklington is YO42. Owain 12:50, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: YO95

message: This page is getting more filled with errors. A quick glance at the postal county shows several postcodes from the London postal county in the Essex or Middlesex postal counties.  Bishops Stortford is now moved to Essex?? and since when was "West Riding of Yorkshire" a postal county? 
This whole list needs to be populated again with some reliable data. MRSC 16:01, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: They are not errors, they are the correct traditional counties. For example, if you enter E1 1AA into http://www.capscan.co.uk/mcd5demo.htm it correctly shows Middlesex as the traditional county; Similarly, E4 8AA correctly shows Essex. There is no such thing as a postal county anymore, they are referred to as 'former postal counties' in all the PAF documentation. Owain 12:48, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Data quality

message: Now the field denoting what the mnemonic letters stand for has been removed, we need a different way to indicate what they mean. How about emboldening the post town that the area is named after? This still won't help in the case of TD, TS, and others that aren't named after post towns though. Perhaps the last column could be used to indicate what the area is, rather than the pretty useless England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland that's there now? Owain 10:47, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Main post town

message: We now have around 2742 districts listed.  According to ONS Postal Geography there were 3064 in May 2005 so we're still missing quite a few.  I've made about 50 changes on the As to Ds and I think we now have all of the geographic ones for those, at least.
For England and Wales, the Proviser house price site has a list that includes almost all the geographic districts.  You need to click on the initial letter of the postcode in the box top left and then scroll down to see the list.
I'm not sure that using … (…) in the lists is helpful. M32 … M34 could mean M32, M33, M34 or M32, M34.  I also think we should list the districts in numeric order even if it means returning to an earlier posttown.  
For next steps, I think it would be good to create stub articles for any post towns that don't have them and, where a post town has many districts, include some information on the area covered as has been done with London.   Telling someone that M16 is in Manchester doesn't give much information.  Saying it includes Old Trafford would be more interesting.  The danger is that this list could become very long with mini-articles about the more interesting districts.  We'd need to limit the expansion to links to places in the district. --Cavrdg 07:38, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Resource for missing districts and other thoughts

message: Is Askham in Furness a typo or a variant for Askam in Furness?  Morwen - Talk 17:35, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Askham/Askam

message: This appears to be showing coverage instead of post town. MRSC 10:38, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've corrected this. A quick glance reveals more places that have been added that are not post towns. MRSC 10:53, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: KY postal area

message: Grantham is twice, under LN and NG.  was it recoded?  Morwen - Talk 08:31, 7 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: In 2004 it was NG31-33 (with no other Granthams listed). There are no changes listed on major changes. Is LN more prestigious than NG? :) MRSC 08:49, 7 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Quite. Morwen - Talk 09:37, 7 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Grantham

message: E18 is South Woodford, though the area does not exists as such it is more the LU station that lends its name, however, Woodford is in Essex and takes the postcode IG8 from Ilford.  E19 was proposed for Woodford Green, where to keep with alphabetical listing, E18 would be Woodford and E19 would be Woodford Green.  IG8 0HN would become E19 0HN.  E20 is the postcode for the fictitional area of Walford, used on the BBC soap [ Eastenders ]
82.69.38.93 14:11, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  London postcode prefix E 

message: Aren't JE and GY missing from the list? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 217.152.120.139 (talk) 10:24, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Jersey and Guernsey? 

message: The character … has been used three times in the article. It seems to be used to indicate a range of directly consecutive integers as the numeric part of the district code for CH and SK, but this use makes little sense for ST. Also, there are many consecutive ranges where it's not used. Does anyone here recall inserting it, and what they meant when they did? Postcodes (talk) 18:25, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Elipses indicating ranges of postcodes? 

message: Known issues
#Needs to deal with cases where post towns contain both linked and unlinked text.
#Needs to determine the field operated on explicitly, not rely on whether it contains commas to determine it's the postal districts field.
#Should provide extra information for postal districts as a field, INSERTing NULL if not supplied.
#A separate record should be INSERTed for each post town if there is a list.
#Some re-factoring is required.  Postcodes (talk) 23:56, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Simple importer python code 

message: The article on Ballieston describes it as Ward 47 of Glasgow, though it's postal district is G69. Would it make sense to have districts for Glasgow as per London? Do the postal districts G1, G2, G3, G4, G5, G11, G12, G13, G14, G15, G20, G21, G22, G23, G30, G31, G32, G33, G34, G40, G41, G42, G43, G44, G45, G51, G52 and G53 (and maybe some others?) have names in the same way? Postcodes (talk) 16:46, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Districts for Glasgow? 

message: Obsolete would store whether the postcode is one currently officially allocated by the Royal Mail. It would have values of Y, N, ? or the year it became obsolete.
Partial would store whether the postcode covers more than one post town. It would have values of Y, N or a range, eg 9xx for Pevensey B24
Comments would hold any other information, such as "one delivery point" for Pevensey BN24.
Any information repeated a significant number of times should probably have its own field. 
Any thoughts on this? 
Postcodes 23:54, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Since there have been no objections, I will go ahead and implement this soon. If this is a problem for you, speak up now! If you are working on changes to this article and do not give notification, even if they are substantial it's quite reasonable to expect you to integrate your changes into the new layout. Postcodes 13:48, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

text: OK, Done! Postcodes 16:58, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Three extra fields: obsolete, partial and comments 

message: Should these be included in this list? If so, they should have a field to indicate their status. There's no obvious pattern to for them. Further, these are often allocated to a particular business. Rather than the generic entry "Businesses", these should be listed. Postcodes (talk) 00:02, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I've started putting in the details for NGPDs, but I've only done A-H so far. The PDF linked to in the refs gives the real postcode district for some NGPDs, so I've used these instead of Y in the field where available. Postcodes 16:57, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Non-geographic postcode districts 

message: I've asked about this in the London postal district talk page, but should the list cover sub-divisions of postal districts in London (if this is the right way to put it)? For example, should SW1E (Vauxhall) be included? If not, why not? 
Postcodes (talk) 10:13, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: SW1E is not the postcode for Vauxhall. The source being used isn't a definitive list of postcode districts, rather a tool for statistical use, giving a "default" district where the actual postcode is not known. MRSC • Talk 18:16, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Subdivision of postal districts of London? 

message: What does anyone think of dropping the "Region" column from the table? If it was accurate, it would contain the country the former postal county is in. It isn't accurate (Chepstow is in England/Wales and Chester solely in England, for instance). Its sole redeeming feature is that its less controversial than the county column was.
If someone does think it should stay, would they prefer to use a version of the postal country or the country/countries each post town overlaps with?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Aoeuidhtns (talk • contribs) 14:56, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Drop "Region" column 

message: In view of the ("tentative") outcome of the deletion/merger debate, and the consensus of support for the revised layout demonstrated at User:Richardguk/List of postcode districts, I have replaced Outward postcode list with a redirect (categorised as unprintworthy) to List of postcode districts in the United Kingdom. I have also replaced the entire list at the latter page with a sortable table along the lines discussed. (Incidentally, Outward postcode list was previously by far the worst offending article on Wikipedia for ambiguous wikilinks, having links to 512 disambiguation pages prior to being replaced with a redirect.) Presumably the three sub-pages (List of postcode districts in the United Kingdom/A-H, .../I-P, .../R-Z) can now be converted into redirects to the main article page, but I have not done this yet.
Please note:
A. Postcode districts:
1. Each cell in the postcode district column has a hidden sort key to ensure that AA10 sorts after AA9 and not before AA2. AA0 is sorted after A99 and before AA1 (even though Royal Mail sometimes sorts district 0 after district 9, treating it as an alias for district 10).
2. Districts within the same post town are grouped into a comma-separated list in one row to reduce the size of the table.
3. Rows are, by default, ordered primarily by postcode area and secondarily by the number of the lowest district in the comma-separated list for each post town (and, in the event of a split district causing a tie, tertiarily by post town name). This order is chosen because the page name would cause most readers to expect to see a list in postcode district order, even though we are grouping by post town to save space.
4. Instead of using dashes or ellipses for consecutive ranges, each district is listed, so that searches can find any valid district.
5. Districts split across post towns are listed in each place as "AANN (part)".
6. No attempt is made to indicate which sectors (or part-sectors) correspond to each post town, on the basis that this detail is likely to be harder to maintain accurately over time. Also, sectors and part-sectors are easily misinterpreted by those unfamiliar with the structure and terminology of postcodes (particularly with the space separator that sectors require), so a simpler but clearer list is advantageous. If there is consensus on this, it may be helpful to add a note so that future editors understand the rationale.
7. An asterisk is used to denote wholly non-geographic districts. This needs a little more explanation in the introductory section to the article.
8. For ease of maintenance, no attempt is made in this list to describe the organisations using any non-geographic districts, there are no references or notes within the table, and no reference is made to localities within post towns or to non-postal placenames.
9. "GIR*" is included under BOOTLE (area L) because GIR 0AA is assigned to the BOOTLE post town and is effectively an alias for L30 4GB.
B. Counties:
10. Counties were mentioned in the debate (by 84.68.42.171). Unfortunately, the boundaries of most administrative and ceremonial counties (and even of England, Scotland and Wales) do not correspond closely to most postcode boundaries. For sortable columns to be useful, we need to avoid having rows that cover multiple placenames. There is therefore a new column showing the former postal county for each post town, which is a simple hierarchy but one which is likely to be broadly meaningful to most readers interested in a particular part of the country.
11. Because the former postal county has officially been changed from Leicestershire to Rutland for much of OAKHAM (LE15) and MARKET HARBOROUGH (LE16), the county for these is given as "Leicestershire / Rutland" and so they will sort at the end of Leicestershire if sorted by the county column. Rationale: It seems more likely that people seeking Rutland will try looking alphabetically under Leicestershire than vice versa.
12. There is no special hidden sort key for counties, so counties prefixed "County" (Durham and the Northern Ireland counties), "East" (Lothian, Sussex), "Isle(s) of"  (Man, Scilly, Wight and the Scottish islands), "Mid" (Glamorgan, ), "North" (Humberside, Yorkshire), "South" (Glamorgan, Humberside, Yorkshire) or "West" (Glamorgan, Lothian, Midlands, Sussex, Yorkshire) will sort according to their full (prefixed) name and not under the substantive part. Rationale: Most of subdivisions and alternative names are sufficiently obvious to justify not adding the complication of a special sort key in the sortable county column.
C. Piping:
13. Since a sortable table may cause rows to become separated, every row is fully linked. This, unfortunately, necessitates many duplicate links for postcode areas and counties, but linking only some rows would be unhelpful to readers who use the sort functionality.
14. Post towns are hardcoded in CAPITALS and (except for LONDON) piped to the corresponding placename article.
15. As with postal links on other pages, piped wikilinks are used so that LONDON links to London postal district. For the equivalent postal county in the last column, the link is directly to London itself so that there is a choice of postal and geographical link, at the expense perhaps of causing mild confusion to people finding LONDON and London taking them to different articles.
16. Pipes are used to avoid linking to disambiguation and redirect pages to reduce the likelihood of future double-redirects. (The only exception is DULAS which currently has a disambiguation page but no article page.)
17. To ensure that every post town has a corresponding geography article, a stub article needs creating for Dulas, Anglesey as well as for Llanbedrgoch, Llwyngwril, Marianglas and Tyn-y-Gongl (LL area); Roy Bridge (PH area); and Clarbeston Road and Glogue (SA area).
D. Wrapping:
18. CSS styles are used to prevent the post town and county columns from wrapping, at the expense of increasing the size of the wikicode and HTML.
19. To prevent the district column becoming excessively wide, comma-separated lists of districts are split with a  where a post town has districts that span multiples of 10 or (within central London) where there are alphanumeric districts in traditional district 1 (this is as proposed during the course of the merger debate). Even so, there remain some wide lines (which may wrap), such as with SW10–SW19 and with W1A*–W1W. Are these manual line breaks beneficial?
— Richardguk (talk) 05:11, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: 17.  Remaining missing post town articles now created: Llanbedrgoch, Llwyngwril, Marianglas (redirect to Marian-glas), Tyn-y-Gongl, Glogue. Redirects previously created for Dulas, Anglesey (DULAS), Roybridge (ROY BRIDGE), Clarbeston Road (CLARBESTON ROAD). — Richardguk (talk) 13:21, 23 December 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Post-merger feedback 

message: has been nominated for deletion and I came here to replace it with . When I opened the page for editing it caused Firefox to freeze. After I got it open I noticed that it contained a lot of unnecessary formatting, "style="white-space:nowrap;"|" was used 3000. I removed all of them and used  where necessary. It's used in the four headers. It's not required in the following circumstances, where the town or county is a single word, where the link is ALFORD, Cleveland or Avon. It is required, where the link is , ,  or . Given that the fourth column title "Former postal county" seems to be longer that any of the counties it might not be required there either but... In all  is used 554 times and reduces the page size quite a bit. something lame from CBW 12:18, 20 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Page size 

message: 91.85.32.166 has proposed that List of post towns in the United Kingdom be merged into List of postcode districts in the United Kingdom. The reason stated is: "The above [list of postcode districts] page is just this [list of post towns] page but better and more readable." — Richardguk (talk) 23:17, 12 December 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merger proposal 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: In the list in the article, many places in the post towwns column are in CAPITALS. The article doesn't specify the significance of that. It seems unlikely to be "Special Post Towns" as there are more than 110 entries. Could someone who knows, update the article to explain. -- SGBailey (talk) 23:52, 19 November 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Post Towns (?)