This is the latest in an occasional 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 make available new open address datasets released by Birmingham City Council and Lichfield District Council.
Update: 17 February 2025
I have now created geocoded versions of the Birmingham and Lichfield address datasets described in the post below:
BHAM_CTBANDS_NSUL_202501.zip (Birmingham, 53.1 MB)
LDC_CTBANDS_NSUL_202501.zip (Lichfield, 4.7 MB)
These datasets contain all of the information from the underlying Council datasets, other than the postcodes. Geographic coordinates and postcodes have been appended from the latest edition of ONS's National Statistics UPRN Lookup (January 2025). I have prepared the data in CSV and GeoJSON formats, suitable for re-use under the terms of the Open Government Licence.
Requests to four councils
Late last year, Leeds City Council published a new list of all domestic properties in its area, including full addresses and Council Tax bands, with notice of permission to re-use the data under the terms of the Open Government Licence. I have written in earlier posts about the access and re-use requests that I submitted to unlock that open dataset.
Last month I requested equivalent information from four other English councils:
"I would like to request the Council's current list of all domestic properties within the [name of council] area, including (at minimum) the full address, the assigned Council Tax band, the Council's property reference, and the Unique Property Reference Number (UPRN) for each property on the list."
I also requested permission to re-use the disclosed information on OGL terms i.e. as open data.
I sent requests to Birmingham City Council, Lichfield District Council, Nottingham City Council, and the London Borough of Hackney, and have now received responses from all four councils.
I am pleased to say Birmingham and Lichfield both disclosed their full address lists with Council Tax bands and UPRNs, and confirmed permission to re-use the data.
I plan to standardise the format of these address lists and add geographic coordinates, once the ONS Geography team has published the next edition of its ONS UPRN Directory (ONSUD).
In the meantime you are welcome to download the address lists as received, along with the related correspondence, using the links below.
My requests to the other two councils were less successful. Nottingham disclosed a list of UPRNs with Council Tax bands, but refused to release the corresponding address data. Hackney declined to disclose any of the requested information. In both cases I have asked the councils to review their responses.
Response from Birmingham City Council
Download: CT_list_Birmingham_City_70416676.zip (19.51 MB)
Birmingham has supplied its Council Tax property list in two Excel workbooks containing a total of 466,474 rows of data. Metadata in the workbooks indicates the data was extracted from Council systems on 30/12/2024.
The data includes the full address with postcode, current chargeable Council Tax band, the Council's property reference, and UPRN.
The full address and postcode is concatenated in a single field in the workbooks. The UPRNs are missing for about 6.5% of the records.
I had to press the Council a little to confirm permission to re-use the data under the Open Government Licence – the team that supplied the data initially considered that no permission was required because the same information is accessible to the public on the Valuation Office Agency website.
Response from Lichfield District Council
Download: CT_list_Lichfield_District.zip (2.32 MB)
Lichfield has supplied its Council Tax property list in an Excel workbook containing 49,350 rows of data. Metadata in the workbook indicates the data was extracted from Council systems on 17/12/2024.
The data includes the full address with postcode, current chargeable Council Tax band, the Council's property reference, and UPRN.
The full address and postcode is concatenated in a single field in the workbook. There are no missing UPRNs.
I chose Lichfield because I was aware it had published a similar Council Tax property dataset as open data on its website between 2014 and 2016.
The Council's Revenue team confirmed in its response that the Council's FOI team was happy for me to re-use the disclosed information, but also said "they are checking with the Royal Mail regarding you using the postcodes. Until the Royal Mail confirms you are able to use their postcode, please disregard this section of information."
I have not received any further correspondence on this point, so if you re-use this dataset I recommend that you assume the postcodes are not covered by the Open Government Licence and cannot be re-used as open data.
Response from Nottingham City Council
Download: CT_list_Nottingham_City_20271_(no_addresses).zip (3.72 MB)
Nottingham has supplied its Council Tax property list in an Excel workbook containing a total of 158,697 rows of data. Metadata in the workbook indicates the data was extracted from Council systems on 12/12/2024.
The data includes the Council's property reference, Council Tax band, and UPRN. The UPRNs are missing for about 0.5% of the records.
The Council did not respond to my request for permission to re-use the disclosed information, so currently the above dataset cannot be re-used as open data.
In its response, the Council applied the exemption in section 43(2) of the FOI Act ("commercial interests") to withhold all of its Council Tax address data. Nottingham maintained that, whereas Leeds City Council took the position that its Council Tax address data was created without the use of Ordnance Survey (or Royal Mail) data:
"Nottingham City Council's equivalent dataset was created in a different way derived directly from Ordnance Survey and Royal Mail data. Addresses created through the Local Land & Property Gazetteer (LLPG) means the council are using components from other sources to create the address, including Ordnance Survey Data, and postcodes from the Royal Mail."
I have asked the Council to carry out an internal review of its handling of my access and re-use requests.
Response from London Borough of Hackney
Download: CT_list_Hackney_LB_30494858_(no_data).zip (785.08 KB)
Hackney did not disclose any of the requested information. The Council provided a quite bizarre response in which it said:
"We have applied Section 31(1)(a) ['law enforcement'] to your request because of the risk of increased crime that would likely occur if a list of empty properties was released to the wider public under a freedomof information request."
and
"The Council has applied section 41(1) ['information provided in confidence'] to the part of your request that asks for specific account details, account-holder name, occupancy information and information relating to reliefs."
I have asked the Council to carry out an internal review of its handling of my requests, on the basis that I did not ask the Council to disclose a list of empty properties nor any other information that could be used to identify empty properties, and also did not ask the Council to disclose specific account details, account-holder name, occupancy information, information relating to reliefs, nor any other information obtained by the Council from taxpayers to whom it owes a duty of confidentiality.
Previous posts related to the campaign for open address data in the UK
Open data: are ONS's address data products legal? (7 January 2025)
Open address data published by Leeds City Council – Ordnance Survey intervenes to protect Royal Mail IP (24 November 2024)
Open address data published by Leeds City Council shows the way to a national open address file (16 October 2024)
Whatever happened to the UK Government's Open Address Register programme? (1 October 2024)
FOI release: Royal Mail's view on a House of Lords proposal for open address data in the UK (15 August 2024)
Open addresses in the House of Lords – what happened? (28 March 2024)
Thoughts on campaigning for open address data in the UK (30 June 2023)
UK address data: a primer and bibliography (last updated 30 November 2022)