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 South Hams 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 South Hams District Council

The latest council to release its Council Tax address list is South Hams District Council in the South West region of England.

This case presents a rare example of a perfect response. The Council disclosed all of the requested information, with permission for re-use under the Open Government Licence, without any difficulties.

You can download my correspondence with the Council: CT_address_list_South_Hams_FOI-4508_[NO_DATA_correspondence_only].zip (0.27 MB).

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

Access to this dataset

I am not publishing South Hams 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.

Fortunately, the Council has published the data file in its disclosure log. You can currently download the file from the response page. I don't know whether that is a persistent link, however. If the link doesn't work, you should be able to find the response and data file by searching the disclosure log.

If you are not able to access the data file via the Council's disclosure log, you can also ask the Council directly for a copy. For tips on submitting access to information and re-use requests see this other blog post. My requests to South Hams District Council were submitted on 15 July 2026 and the Council's reference is FOI/4508.

More about South Hams District Council's address dataset

South Hams District Council has disclosed its Council Tax address dataset to me in the form of an Excel workbook 'List of current CTAX properties, UPRN and banding.xlsx'. Each record includes the full address and postcode (combined in a single field, with the postcode also in a separate field), Council Tax band, local property reference, and Unique Property Reference Number (UPRN), for a domestic property in the South Hams District Council area.

The information in the list seems to be well-maintained. UPRNs are supplied for all records.

After fixing obvious errors in five UPRNs, it was possible to match 48,366 (99.8%) of the 48,461 records in the Council Tax list to records in the August 2026 release of Ordnance Survey's OS Open UPRN product. This means nearly all of the property records in the dataset can be geocoded for mapping and geographic analysis of domestic properties in the South Hams District Council area.