OT: Who allocates house numbers in UK?

[NY]

I had this happen with two houses that I lived in. The first was an existing house, built maybe 5 years before I bought it. The postcode digit in the second part changed some time during the 1990s from 3 to 0. The Royal Mail were no help at all: their attitude was "your postcode has changed - if any letters are addressed to the old postcode they will not be delivered". I imagine many people's postcodes were affected in the same way - a change of digit but the letters remained the same: xx12 3yy went to xx12 0yy.

Then the same thing happened in my second house - one of a brand new development. All the houses had the same code and the digit changed from 5 to 4. I'm not sure whether the builder had been given the wrong information or whether the Royal Mail had allocated a code in the wrong area.

In both cases, the old postcode was never reused so it would have been easy enough for the Royal Mail to have set up an automatic redirection to give people chance to wrote to all the many companies to get the postcode changed on their database.

[Mike]

Me too. Our house has no number, just a name, because it was built years after the road was numbered, as were three other houses that are our my immediate neighbours. This is in a university town so we too, get attempted pizza delivery, usually at the beginning of the academic year. I used to ask if it was a vegetarian pizza and when the almost inevitable reply of 'no' came I said it can't be for me then and shut the door.

- Mike

[NY]

I do PC support for customers in the local towns and villages, so I have to find a lot of houses. Anyone who's got a house name makes it a lot harder to locate: a postcode gets you close but not right to the house, and unlike numbers you can't infer where a house is if you find a neighbouring house. Luckily someone has produced a web site of maps for the villages round here which shows every house, annotated with a reference number in a list of alphabetic house names and street names. Without that, I'd be lost.

It isn't helped by Google Streetview's policy of blurring text on their photos. There may be good reasons for doing it, but it's a shame that they don't make an exception for people's house numbers on their front door or gate. I always look up a house on Streetview to see where I'll be going, and in some cases it's difficult to find two houses with visible numbers to work out which way the numbering goes.

What is even more odd is the number of people who don't have any number or name displayed on their house or on the gate. How they expect the emergency services to find them in a hurry is anyone's guess. I wonder if emergency services have access to a map which shows every house by name/number - an official version of the unofficial maps that I've used for villages near me.

[S Viemeister]

Yes. This is why couriers who are new to the area, pass by our house and often keep going til they reach the local PO. The postmaster then tells them to turn around and go back the way they came. When an order form gives a space for delivery directions, I put in a simple description 'we are the first house on the left, on the xxx road, opposite xxxxx Farm) but not all order forms allow for this.

There's a name on the gate, but the gate is about 20 metres from the road, so I've put a (handpainted, temporary, til I get around2it) sign near the bottom of the drive. It helps, but many drivers still zoom on past it, to the spot their GPS has given them.

[Tim Streater]

Further, even if the Royal Mail updates the postcode to be correct, that doesn't mean that everyone's satnav is suddenly correct. That's down to the satnav people updating their databases and the rest of us updating our satnavs.

[Martin Brown]

Or in a field.

How do you get on with the many websites (and Barclaycard security) that insist all roads must have a name (indeed ours may have done when there were still turnpikes and medieval toll roads before the black death).

I alternate between "No street name" and "Main Street" depending on how I am feeling. There is only one road through the village today.

[Martin Brown]

No it is definitely local council and the PO are at their mercy or you wouldn't have the Bolton/Manchester Road house numbering conundrum:

[Jonathan]

Not true according to Wikipedia:

Scottish inventor Alexander Bain worked on chemical mechanical fax type devices and in 1846 was able to reproduce graphic signs in laboratory experiments. He received British patent 9745 on May 27, 1843 for his "Electric Printing Telegraph."

Jonathan

[charles]

Post codes are based on Post Office delivery rounds/area. Very 20th century.

[harry]

I live in a village of over 1000 houses. Less than 2% have numbers. Two postal codes cover the entire village.

[Another Dave]

A steep road opposite us is known universally as Cardiac Hill despite having a proper name.

Another Dave

[Roger Hayter]

I insert the name of the village/hamlet in place of street name, and then all blank spaces to the Post Town (or "city" in American forms). This usually seems to work.

It doesn't help that one house has the same name as the village (obviously the village was named after the house) and therefore gets a considerable proportion of all deliveries for the village.

[Michael Chare]

I did have to register a named property with the local Welsh council, as the name had fallen into disuse. We were sent a little map with the property marked on it. The map had to be signed and returned.

I would have thought you would need a large majority to implement a numbering system. People who did not agree might not display the number and could display a wrong number. I am pleased to say that these days delivery drivers can generally find unnumbered properties. The emergency services have no excuse for not being able to do the same.

[Robin]

a postcode is the whole thing, including the final "unit"

[Michael Chare]

That could make selecting the house name from a list when you place an internet order a bit tedious.

[Huge]

My S-I-L lived in Eire. Their address was "{Name}, The Hill, Abbeyfeale".

"The Hill, Abbeyfeale" was probably about 200 houses spread over several square miles. Eire has no postcodes. Yet.

[dr.s.lartius]

The Ordnance Survey should have everything. When I moved here, umpteen yea rs ago, the father (he and/or his brother worked for the OS) gave me A4 cop ies of this part of the local 1:2500 maps, and they include all that should be needed for this outer London area. Presumably the Emergency Services h ave that or better,

The same is shown, larger, when one uses the Council service to report some thing like a broken bollard.

I have yet to discover a way of directly getting that map electronically (w ithout payment).

[charles]

You could always use an 8 figure NGR, but that's 10 characters to remember. Before the advent of post codes, I did know mine

[charles]

Surrey CC have waht they call an "interactive Map" on their website.

[Martin Brown]

Minimum wage for a few hours a month doesn't add up to much (if they insist on being paid) and supposing you can find someone prepared to do the job for such a pittance. A councillor ends up doing it for nowt.

Last time I analysed the Hambleton parish precepts the results were as follows in 2013 they will have increased a bit but not by much.

upto

200 3 500 5 1,000 10 2,000 14 5,000 29 10,000 15 20,000 6 50,000 3 100,000 5 200,000 1 500,000 1

Total of 92 parishes so 1/5 have a spend of £1k or less more than 1/3 of them have under £2k spending power and less than a third have more than £10k of annual budget. The latest precepts are online at:

By my reckoning there are still 4 parishes on that new list whose

*entire* precept is smaller than the wages of a parish clerk (assuming a minimum of four PC meetings a year and associated administration).