UK postcodes – Esri shapefiles and geojson sets for postcode areas and districts

The Esri shapefiles and geojson versions of our detailed UK postcodes map are strictly for developers and geocoders using specialist GIS software (Geographic Information System) such as QGIS, ArcGIS, MAPublisher plugin for Adobe Illustrator, GeoTools (Java) etc.

If you don’t use GIS software, please see our other postcode maps.

What’s included

In this bundle are GIS files for the following:

• Top-level postcode areas as interlocking polygons
  (the first 1-2 letters of a postcode: G, SW, AB etc)
• Second-level postcode districts as interlocking polygons
  (the first 3-4 letters and digits of a postcode, ie. the bit before the gap: G73, SW1A, AB14 etc)
• Third-level postcode sectors as inland boundary lines
  (the first digit of the second part of the postcode after the gap: G73 5, SW1A 2, AB14 0)
• Fourth-level postcode units as latitude and longitude points with grouping attributes
  (the full postcode: G73 5QU, SW1A 2NU, AB14 0LA)

Northern Ireland postcodes are included at every level.

The postcodes have full attributes, which can be run through your GIS software for rapid labelling and grouping.

Sources

Maproom’s shapefiles for UK postcodes are derived initially from Royal Mail’s dataset called Code-Point Open, which is a series of CSV files with eastings and northings for postcode points. We have taken this data and painstakingly drawn our own datasets for area and district polygons, plus sector boundary lines, and a super-processed geojson/mbtiles set for all 1.7 million+ postcode points.

Please note that we previously sold a cheap postcodes shapefiles dataset that we created largely as Voronoi polygons clipped to coastlines. Voronoi postcode datasets are good for basic purposes but are jagged and geographically odd at deep zoom levels. Our new datasets are capable of much deeper zooming, down to street level, with higher pricing to reflect this capability.

Maproom’s dynamic online postcode maps are based on these datasets.

 

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Limited licence

Unlike our downloadable vector art maps which are sold on a royalty-free licence, Maproom’s GIS postcode formats have a restricted license which limits commercial usage. They are licensed only for projects such as humanitarian research, which are not rivals to our own services. Files are not supplied until licensing terms are agreed. Please email maproom@thamesidemedia.com to enquire. 

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