Owen Boswarva's blog

Update 5 March 2026

The download containing Council Tax address data disclosed by Manchester City Council in September, October, and November 2025 and originally linked in the post below has been removed as of today, following receipt of further correspondence from the Council. A second download containing a geocoded version of the data has also been removed.

The Council's new position is that it made an error when it granted permission for re-use of the addresses in the Council Tax list without restrictions, because the addresses contain third party rights that the Council was not authorised to license.

You can download my correspondence with the Council to date: CT_address_list_Manchester_City_Council_FOI17432_[NO_DATA_correspondence_only].zip (0.72 MB).

It seems likely that this change in the Council's position follows an intervention from Ordnance Survey and/or GeoPlace LLP as anticipated in my recent post.

I am seeking clarification from the Council in further correspondence and some or all of the data may be republished at a later date.

The remainder of this post is as originally published in November 2025, with the exception of the download links and removal of a screenshot.

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 a new open address dataset released by Manchester City Council.

Background

As described 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 Manchester City Council

The latest council to release its Council Tax address list is Manchester City Council in North West England. The Council disclosed all of the requested data under the FOI Act and confirmed permission for re-use of the disclosed information "without any restrictions. There are no limitations or conditions attached to its use, including for commercial purposes."

However, it took some time to unlock this dataset. Following my request at the start of September the Council disclosed its Council Tax list with full addresses, but withheld the UPRNs (Unique Property Reference Numbers) on the basis that they were personal data. The UPRNs were an important part of my request because they can be used to match the records to a range of existing publicly available information, including geographic coordinates for each property.

Fortunately this decision was overturned following an internal review. From that point the Council was cooperative with the release of the remaining information, but there were technical issues with the extraction of the UPRNs. It also took several rounds of emails to obtain a clear statement of permission for open re-use of the disclosed information.

You can download my correspondence with the Council, including the information as disclosed: CT_address_list_Manchester_City_Council_FOI17432.zip (30.56 MB) [link removed].

Thanks to Manchester City Council's Revenues and Benefits Unit for facilitating the disclosure and open licensing of this data, and in particular for the work necessary to produce the UPRNs.

Geocoded open version of Manchester City Council address dataset

I have created a geocoded version of the Manchester City Council address dataset, which you can also download: MANCHESTER_CTBANDS_ONSUD_202511.zip (40.7 MB) [link removed].

This dataset contains information collated from the underlying Council datasets, other than the postcodes. Geographic coordinates and postcodes have been appended from the latest edition of the ONS UPRN Directory (November 2025). I have prepared the data in CSV and GeoJSON formats, suitable for re-use under the terms of the Open Government Licence (OGL). Please see the enclosed ReadMe file for information on attribution and additional technical details.

[screenshot of geocoded Manchester City Council address data visualised in Google Earth – removed]

Previous posts related to the campaign for open address data in the UK

City of Wolverhampton has released its Council Tax address list as open data (28 November 2025)

Barnet Council has released its Council Tax address list as open data (26 November 2025)

Buckinghamshire Council has released its Council Tax address list as open data (25 November 2025)

Camden Council has released its Council Tax address list as open data (20 November 2025)

Dorset Council has released its Council Tax address list as open data (19 November 2025)

Bristol City Council has released its Council Tax address list as open data (17 November 2025)

Wiltshire Council has released its Council Tax address list as open data (8 November 2025)

Durham County Council has released its Council Tax address list as open data (7 November 2025)

Sheffield City Council has released its Council Tax address list as open data (3 November 2025)

Islington Council has released its Council Tax address list as open data (28 October 2025)