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Postcodes are unique to the UK and allow you to establish the location of a home, office or retail store. A postcode is made up of four sections:
- Area - one or two letters indicating the city or region
- District - one or two digits signifying a locality/ area or neighbourhoods in that city/ region
- Sector - a number allocated to streets
- Unit - two letters, which are allocated to streets, and sides of the street
POSTCODE Outward CodeInward CodePostcode AreaPostcode DistrictPostcode SectorPostcode UnitSW1W0NY
Ordnance Survey uses its Code-Point with polygons technology to map out every unit postcode in the UK. Creating a postcode map can help you analyse a location to make better decisions about crime prevention, public health, economic regeneration or the marketing of your business.
GB Maps allows you to export an editable postcode district map of the UK. A user can then customise the postcode district map to split into zones. These zones might denote, for example, sales territories or delivery areas.
FreeMapTools allows you to create an area postcode map, which can assist a business with planning.
The polygon shapes on the postcode area map show the boundaries of the postcode area. Another way to create shapes on a map for analysis is to create a travel time map.
The TravelTime helps businesses filter location data using travel time. The Time Filter API feature allows users to export the postcodes that relate to a travel time search. Zooming in on the area postcode map, for example, we can see the postcode boundaries that surround the city of Leeds, UK. If you are not a developer, contact us to request a data export.
If the user wanted to know where they could travel to within 45 minutes driving from Leeds City centre, they could conduct a travel time search. This would produce a unique shape based on travel time. This visualisation was built using the TravelTime demo tool. If you are not a developer you can use it to create this shape.
Looking at the maps side by side, we can see that the travel time shape crosses several postcode boundaries.
TimeFilter would then extract the relevant postcode data within the travel time shape for the user to analyse. Get a sample of the postcode data that falls within a travel time area here.
TimeFilter can also make decisions about which postcodes to include, depending on user preference. For example, you can see from the image below that the postcode areas of York appears within the travel time shape, but that much of the area cannot be reached within 45 minutes. TimeFilter could be programmed so that if the coverage of a postcode sector was less than 25%, results would not be included.
The user can also extract coverage information.
Start using the TravelTime Postcodes today. To discuss your project, get in touch.