No open national address file: PAF remains a proprietary Royal Mail asset

The Postcode Address File (32.1m delivery addresses) went private with Royal Mail in 2013; in 2025 Royal Mail successfully defended its database rights in court, and anyone needing address data pays layered licence fees under complex IP restrictions. Partial substitutes are inadequate: ONS Postcode Directory gives postcode centroids not addresses; Ordnance Survey opened UPRNs (identifiers) in 2020 but not the addresses themselves; OpenStreetMap coverage is incomplete. The ODI-incubated Open Addresses project died in 2015 for lack of legal access. The Centre for Public Data's Open Address File UK campaign and a House of Lords proposal have put the issue back on the agenda, including a request that Ofcom review PAF licensing.

Address lookup is a tax on every delivery firm, emergency service, council and startup in the country. Nations with open address files (Denmark, France, Netherlands) documented net economic gains; the UK re-buys its own geography millions of times over.

Government acquisition or mandated open licensing of PAF (Ofcom review of PAF terms as the first step), or an openly licensed national address register built from councils' AddressBase source data and published through the National Data Library.

// State-led: Instrument: Ofcom PAF review, government acquisition, or National Data Library register; AddressBase licensing blocks outside builds.

National drag on every delivery firm and emergency service is high, but Royal Mail's 2025 court win and licensing lock make acquisition or mandated opening a slow, contested lift.