Why does my postcode

There are currently about 43, zipcode. This tool can also find the postal code of many other countries. Postal codes vary from one country to another but they are usually a group of numbers between 3 and 10 digits long. In some countries such as the United Kingdom and Canada, postal code are comprised of number and letters. Toggle navigation Map Developers. Home Maps What county am I in? Where am I? What is my zipcode? What is my address? What country am I in? What's my Zip Code - Find the zip code of your current location.

We found your zip or postal code based on your internet connection. A unit postcode describes a street or part of street, a single address, a group of properties, a subsection of a property or an individual organisation or department within an organisation.

There are more than 1. This number changes regularly as around 2, postcodes are created and 2, are terminated each month. The allocation of postcodes depends on the amount of mail received.

Large users of mail such as the DVLA have different postcodes for different departments. The unit postcodes are used to find about 30 million actual addresses or delivery points, the minimum number of delivery points for a postcode is one, the maximum is , and on average the postcode is allocated to 17 delivery points. There are on average postcodes to each sector: the most being , the least is 1.

That leaves 20 for each letter. Since their inception, postcodes have become more than just a tool to help address mail. As postcodes nest into sectors, districts and areas, the postcode has become a handy label to define geographical locations.

Postcode boundaries provide a convenient way to tie people into manageable groups with similar lifestyles and outlooks to form the building blocks of geodemographic analysis. See our blog on geodemographic analysis Although postcodes focus on addresses, their aggregated groupings and boundaries provide an ideal building block for geographic analysis.

Most businesses have data that is attached to postcode information. This could be customer records, or sales receipts for a store where the customers are most likely to travel to. Having data attached to postcodes opens up analysis and comparisons using census or other demographic data. Our own GIS systems can use postcodes as their geographical key. Read about our work with postcode mapping Postcodes are a far more accessible reference than coordinates or longitude and latitude making them ideal for setting departure and destination points in navigation tools.

However, the sheer number of postcodes means that when you move beyond individual journeys, for business or fleet logistics planning the calculations required quickly become unmanageable.

See our blog on postcode sector-based journey planning In existence in some form for more than 1, years, the divisions are based on long-standing counties and parish boundaries, which have themselves changed and been sub-divided over the centuries. This reference source ties postcodes to census and other demographic datasets. Read our blog exploring the history and use of administrative geography As you can see, postcodes have developed into far more than just a means of directing your post, they have become a fundamental building block for navigation, logistics and economic operation.

Postcode mapping for business is what we do, so forgive us if we seem a little too passionate about the subject, but I'm sure you'll agree, there really is a lot to the humble postcode. We've spent more than 25 years working with postcode geography and postcode mapping.

If you'd like to see if we can help your business, please get in touch. Contact us online or call us on: Turning a list or spreadsheet of postcode data into a series of points on a map isn't as simple as using an Excel wizard to do it for you, but it isn't rocket science.

We look at the latest update to TimeTravel, our dataset of drive times and distances between any postcode sector or district. What has changed in the UK road and geographic network, plus new features to make it even more accurate. But what is it, and why should we care? Each year for cycletoworkday we take a look at cycling statistics across the country and try to map that data and find interesting trends. This is mainly because we at Beacon Dodsworth are either a little bit obsessed about cycling, or we tend to worry about the environment.

Recently, we were contacted by a company responsible for organising charity door knockers. They needed more than 9, postcode sectors mapped at A4 size to use at a local level to plan fundraising routes and clearly define territories for each agent.

With the next census due to take place this year, we thought it was a good time to take stock of some of the changes and trends we noticed between the and the census. What difference does 10 years make to our society and the people that live within it?

Now we are back in the office, we continue to support hybrid working. Administrative geography is a way of dividing the country into smaller sub-divisions or areas that correspond with the area of responsibility of local authorities and government bodies. We take a look at administrative geography, what it is and how to use it. More than 64 million people live in the UK, each with their own outlook, priorities, needs and way of life.

Geodemographic profiling offers a way to group these individuals to try and identify the right audience for your product or service. It gave us the opportunity to highlight how GIS mapping can be used to create marketing campaigns and raise awareness of the benefits of eating more fruit and veg. John, our director talks about living and working with colour blindness in the mapping industry where colours are pivotal in adding dimensions to people's understanding.

We use Beacon Dodsworth's scripting technology to answer that most important of questions when the sun finally does threaten an appearance. The humble postcode has been around for years. We look at how postcodes are used and what led to their introduction. The British Population Survey BPS is a survey of household income and shopping habits collected by face-to-face interviews.

We take a look at the BPS in detail, what exactly it is made from and how its data can be usefully applied by businesses and public organisations. As a Yorkshire-based company, we wanted to help celebrate Yorkshire Day, which takes place on 1st August.

Displaying data on maps makes it easier to understand as well as giving a new perspective on a problem. Using a GIS to prepare and present data has become increasingly popular over the last 20 years, but graphical displays of data on maps were around long before computers came along.

Postcode sectors are aggregations of individual postcodes and they provide meaningful geographical reporting areas in any GIS. However, they aren't as easy to map as you might think. Here is how we do it. Toby, our Account Manager, looks at the changes to working style and client needs in the geodata industry following the COVID outbreak. We've used the territory manager tool in Prospex GIS to split the UK into north, south and east and west with equal population counts.

A Geographical Information System GIS , is a tool for analysing, visualising, managing and presenting data that is related to a physical, geographical location. That link to geography is the key difference between GIS and other data visualisation techniques. The UK Census what it is, how is it made, and how can it be used to help your organisation with demographic analysis.

After almost 10 years of service, Google retired their Fusion Tables product at the end of This tool was very useful at visualising and sharing large amounts of tabular data - particularly amongst small and mid-sized businesses.

So what can we do to fill the gap left by this tool? The Beacon Dodsworth site uses cookies to improve your user experience and to provide analysis of how our site is used. Your continued use of this site is taken as implied consent to receive cookies from us and our analytics partners.

Toggle navigation. Contact us or call: Tools Consultancy Clients Industries. Home Blog All you need to know about postcodes but were afraid to ask. Postcodes: how do they work and what can they do for us? A brief history of the postcode How does the modern postcode system work?

Postcodes, not just for post Alternatives to postcodes: the geography of government. More about postcodes: Postcode-to-postcode journey planning Postcodes give us a great key around which to plan travel, but for fleet or salesforce planning the calculations can be staggering. The geography of government How administrative geography has developed, how it works and how it compares to postcode geography. The power of postcode sectors Grouping postcodes together into areas is a powerful geographic analysis tool but isn't as easy as you might think.

A brief history of the humble postcode: When and why were postcodes introduced? After Mail volumes grow. A postcode system was needed to facilitate automated sorting. Early s: The Royal Mail starts a mechanisation program to introduce reliable mechanical sorting. Sorting machines needed the address to be machine-readable, so a code system was developed from the Norwich trials.