Owen Boswarva's blog

This is the latest in a series of blog posts about the campaign for open address data in the UK. Previous posts are listed at the bottom.

In this post, I describe a new open address dataset released by East Hertfordshire District Council.

Background

As related in previous posts, I have recently been requesting Council Tax address datasets from a number of local authorities in England, and asking for permission to re-use the data under the terms of the Open Government Licence.

I have created a landing page on my Datadaptive site with download links and other information about the Council Tax address datasets released as open data so far:

www.datadaptive.com/addr/

Release from East Hertfordshire District Council

The latest council to release its Council Tax address list is East Hertfordshire District Council in the East of England.

The Council disclosed most of the requested information, with the exception of the Unique Property Reference Numbers (UPRNs) corresponding to nearly 16% of the properties on the list. The Council holds the missing UPRNs in another system, but has withheld them on the basis that the staff time required to match the UPRNs to the Council Tax list would exceed the cost limit in section 12 of the FOI Act.

The Council has granted permission for re-use of the disclosed information under the terms of the Open Government Licence.

You can download my correspondence with the Council: CT_address_list_East_Herts_F26-316_[NO_DATA_correspondence_only].zip (0.76 MB).

Thanks to Council staff for facilitating the disclosure and open licensing of this data.

Access to this dataset

I am not publishing East Hertfordshire District Council's address dataset here, due to the non-specific but lingering risk of further unsubstantiated claims of infringement from Ordnance Survey and GeoPlace LLP. You can read more about that issue in my blog post from May.

However, there is nothing to stop you asking the Council directly for a copy of the data file. For tips on submitting access to information and re-use requests see this other blog post. My requests to East Hertfordshire District Council were submitted on 1 May 2026 and the Council's reference is F26/316.

More about East Hertfordshire District Council's address dataset

East Hertfordshire District Council has disclosed its Council Tax address dataset to me in the form of a CSV file 'FOI 29913.csv' that contains 69,434 records (including one "dummy" record). Each record includes the full address (split into four fields), postcode, local property reference, Unique Property Reference Number (UPRN), and Council Tax valuation band, for a domestic property in the East Hertfordshire District Council area.

The dataset appears to be well-maintained but the address information contains some inconsistent formatting, extraneous characters, and typos.

UPRN values are missing for 11,048 (15.91%) of the 69,433 property records in the list. 32 of the UPRNs do not match to records in the June 2026 release of OS Open UPRN product. The majority of the property records in the dataset can be geocoded for mapping and geographic analysis of domestic properties in the East Hertfordshire District Council area, but the significant lack of completeness may be relevant for some purposes.