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 Stroud District Council.

Background

As related in previous posts, I have 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/

I recently published a progress update on that project.

Release from Stroud District Council

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

This is another case that started off poorly but had a successful outcome.

I submitted my requests in June. In its initial response the Council said my access request was "invalid" because the information was already accessible via the Valuation Office's online Check your Council Tax band service and from suppliers of Ordnance Survey's address data products.

That decision was overturned following an internal review and the Council disclosed all of the requested information. But the Council granted permission for re-use only of the local property references and addresses in the list. The Council said that it could not license the postcodes, Unique Property Reference Numbers (UPRNs), or Council Tax bands because those parts of the information were subject to third-party intellectual property rights owned by the Post Office, Ordnance Survey, and HMRC's Valuation Office respectively.

However, following an internal review of the Council's handling of my re-use request, the Council has now granted permission for re-use of all of the disclosed information under the terms of the Open Government Licence – with the exception of the postcodes.

The Council has taken on board my arguments that the Valuation Office is not likely to have rights in locally compiled Council Tax lists and that, even if the Council believes Ordnance Survey has rights in the locally assigned set of UPRNs, the Council can share the UPRNs in accordance with OS's Open Identifiers policy.

There is no permission to re-use the postcodes in the supplied Council Tax list. I have not challenged that position, though I think it is more likely that any third-party rights belong to Royal Mail rather than the Post Office.

You can download my correspondence with the Council: CT_address_list_Stroud_IR-231_COM-1955_[NO_DATA_correspondence_only].zip (1.3 MB).

I recommend reviewing the correspondence prior to any re-use of the disclosed information. It is clear from the correspondence that the Council's final statement of permission covers all of the information other than the postcodes, and that the Council was aware, prior to granting its permission, of the broad claim of infringement that Ordnance Survey and GeoPlace had communicated to me in May with regard to publication of other Council Tax address datasets (see below). The Council has described the address data in the supplied Council Tax list as "SDC controlled data" and as "created and owned by Stroud District Council". However, the Council has also said:

"Please note that should we be provided with alternative lawful arguments by any of the parties that have issued copyright notices to your dataadaptive website, we may request a change to the position outlined herein." (sic)

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

Access to this dataset

I am not publishing Stroud 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 Stroud District Council were submitted on 1 June 2026 and the Council's references are IR/231 and COM/1955.

More about Stroud District Council's address dataset

Stroud District Council has disclosed its Council Tax address dataset to me in the form of an Excel workbook '2026_07_30_SDC_FOI_propertyinfo.xlsx'. Each record includes the full address (in a single field but with parts separated by ";"), postcode, Council Tax band, local property reference, and Unique Property Reference Number (UPRN), for a domestic property in the Stroud District Council area. The information in the list seems to be well-maintained.

It was possible to match 57,835 (99.95%) of the 57,865 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 Stroud District Council area.

It was also possible to match 57,667 (99.66%) of the 57,865 records to the May 2026 edition of ONS's National Statistics UPRN Lookup (NSUL) product. This means postcodes, from an alternative open data source, can be appended to nearly all of the property records.

Please see the ReadMe file with the correspondence for information on attribution and additional technical details about the dataset.

Screenshot of geocoded Stroud District Council address data visualised in Leaflet with background mapping from OpenStreetMap