IT ONLY TAKES A MINUTE!
Map by SK53 OSM
There are 116,088 postboxes in the UK in total, according to the freedom of information act, Royal Mail must provide all locations of the postbox and data surrounding it. Although the data they released is not structurally stringent or geocoded, we can take the data and represent it on a map using various software applications.
Edward Betts has put all the data together into a table, sorted by UK postcodes. As you click on each post code, the Open Street Map loads the location with respective sub-postcodes. If this is data that would be useful for yourself, you can also download the TSV file format and have a play around in excel or another number crunching software package.
SK53-OSM continues by adding:
Very incomplete mapping in Wales, the South-West Peninsula, and Lincolnshire are no surprise, but I didn’t expect the pretty good data in most areas of the Scottish Highlands. I suspect that much of this may down to the activities of a single mapper. A number of areas have more postboxes than recorded by Royal Mail in 2009: this may be redundant entries in OSM, single entries for post-box pairs in the Royal Mail data, or changes in the number of postboxes between 2009 and 2013.
As more businesses move towards a digital-first strategy in their day-to-day operations, you’ll be happy to know that Royal Mail provides a set of Business Integration APIs for the following:
Make collecting missed deliveries that much simpler. Integrate the Delivery Office Finder API into your systems to give your staff and customers quick access to details of their dedicated delivery office. Information returned by the API includes details of disabled facilities, car parking, and opening times.
Integrate the Local Collect API from Royal Mail into your system or application to give your customers a choice of more than 10,500 UK Post Offices and flexible pick-up times for their parcel.
Our latest API Shipping solution provides fast response times to API calls, with an improved infrastructure and audit logging process to ensure your customer journeys are monitored.
Check on the progress of important parcels being sent via our Tracked, Special Delivery, Signed For, and International delivery services. With the Tracking API, you and your customers can access our Track & Trace service to follow the location of your shipments, saving both your contact centre and your customers’ time.
