The list of postcode areas in the United Kingdom is a tabulation of the
postcode areas used by
Royal Mail for the purposes of directing mail within the
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...
. The postcode area is the largest geographical unit used and forms the initial characters of the alphanumeric
UK postcode.
There are currently 121 geographic postcode areas in use in the UK and a further three often combined with these covering the Crown Dependencies of Guernsey, Jersey and Isle of Man.
Subdivision
Each postcode area is further divided into
post town
A post town is a required part of all postal addresses in the United Kingdom and Ireland, and a basic unit of the postal delivery system.Royal Mail, ''Address Management Guide'', (2004) Including the correct post town in the address increases ...
s and
postcode districts.
[ There are on average 20 postcode districts to a postcode area.][ The ]London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
post town is instead divided into several postcode areas.[HMSO, ''The Inner London Letter Post'', (1980)]
Scope
The single or pair of letters chosen for postcode areas are generally intended as a mnemonic
A mnemonic ( ) device, or memory device, is any learning technique that aids information retention or retrieval (remembering) in the human memory for better understanding.
Mnemonics make use of elaborative encoding, retrieval cues, and imag ...
for the places served.[ Postcode areas, ]post town
A post town is a required part of all postal addresses in the United Kingdom and Ireland, and a basic unit of the postal delivery system.Royal Mail, ''Address Management Guide'', (2004) Including the correct post town in the address increases ...
s and postcode districts do not follow political boundaries and usually serve much larger areas than the place names with which they are associated. For example, within the PA postcode area the PA1 and PA78 postcode districts are 140 miles apart; and the eight postcode areas of the London post town cover only 40% of Greater London.[ The remainder of its area is covered by sections of twelve adjoining postcode areas: EN, IG, RM, DA, BR, TN, CR, SM, KT, TW, HA and UB.][
]
United Kingdom postcode areas
Crown dependencies
The Crown dependencies (which are not part of the United Kingdom) did not introduce postcodes until later, but use a similar coding scheme. They are separate postal authorities.[
]
Defunct postcode areas
London NE and S
Glasgow
Glasgow, like London, was divided into compass districts: C, W, NW, N, E, SE, S, SW. When postcodes were introduced, these were mapped into the new ''G'' postcode: C1 became G1, W1 became G11, N1 became G21, E1 became G31, S1 became G41, SW1 became G51, and so on. As NW and SE had never been subdivided they became G20 and G40 respectively.
Norwich and Croydon
Norwich and Croydon were used for a postcode experiment in the late 1960s, which was replaced by the current system. The format was of the form NOR or CRO followed by two numbers and a letter, e.g. NOR 07A. They were later changed to CR0 (digit '0') and NR1.
Dublin, Ireland
When Ireland was a part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was a sovereign state in the British Isles that existed between 1801 and 1922, when it included all of Ireland. It was established by the Acts of Union 1800, which merged the Kingdom of Grea ...
a postal district system was introduced in 1917 by the UK government. The letter ''D'' was assigned to Dublin. Upon the establishment of the Irish Free State
The Irish Free State ( ga, Saorstát Éireann, , ; 6 December 192229 December 1937) was a state established in December 1922 under the Anglo-Irish Treaty of December 1921. The treaty ended the three-year Irish War of Independence between ...
and later, the Republic of Ireland
Ireland ( ga, Éire ), also known as the Republic of Ireland (), is a country in north-western Europe consisting of 26 of the 32 Counties of Ireland, counties of the island of Ireland. The capital and largest city is Dublin, on the eastern ...
, the Irish government retained the designation and today it forms part of the Eircode system. Since Irish independence, ''D'' has never been reassigned as a postcode area in the UK. Modern postcodes throughout the Republic of Ireland take a slightly different form from UK postcodes and are specific to individual addresses.
Non-geographic postcodes
A number of non-geographic postcode sectors are also contained within geographic postcode areas.
GIR
GIR 0AA is a postcode created for Girobank in Bootle
Bootle (pronounced ) is a town in the Metropolitan Borough of Sefton, Merseyside, England, which had a population of 51,394 in 2011; the wider Parliamentary constituency had a population of 98,449.
Historically part of Lancashire, Bootle's ...
. It remained in use by its successors when Girobank was taken over by Alliance & Leicester
Alliance & Leicester plc was a British bank and former building society, formed by the merger in 1985 of the Alliance Building Society and the Leicester Building Society. The business demutualised in the middle of 1997, when it was floated o ...
and subsequently by Santander UK
Santander UK plc (, ) is a British bank, wholly owned by the Spanish Santander Group. Santander UK plc manages its affairs autonomously, with its own local management team, responsible solely for its performance.
Santander UK is one of the l ...
.
BF
The BF postcode area was introduced in 2012 to provide optional postcodes for British Forces Post Office addresses, for consistency with the layout of other UK addresses. It uses the national non-geographic post town
A post town is a required part of all postal addresses in the United Kingdom and Ireland, and a basic unit of the postal delivery system.Royal Mail, ''Address Management Guide'', (2004) Including the correct post town in the address increases ...
"BFPO
The British Forces Post Office (BFPO) provides a postal service to HM Forces, separate from that provided by Royal Mail in the United Kingdom. BFPO addresses are used for the delivery of mail in the UK and around the world. BFPO moved from its o ...
" and, as of 2012, the postcode district "BF1".
BX
The non-geographic postcode area BX has been introduced for addresses which do not include a locality: this allows large organisations long-term flexibility as to where they receive their mail. This postcode area is used by Lloyds Banking Group
Lloyds Banking Group is a British financial institution formed through the acquisition of HBOS by Lloyds TSB in 2009. It is one of the UK's largest financial services organisations, with 30 million customers and 65,000 employees. Lloyds Ban ...
(BX1 1LT), HSBC (BX8 0HB) and parts of the HM Revenue and Customs
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like VAT Central Unit (BX5 5AT) and Pay as You Earn (BX9 1AS). Lloyds Bank also use BX4. After splitting from Lloyds, TSB Bank uses BX4 7SB, the latter part of which, when written, looks similar to "TSB".
XX
The non-geographic postcode area XX is used by online retailers for returns by Royal Mail, and for COVID-19
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was identified in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. The disease quickly ...
test samples.
Overseas territories
Certain British Overseas Territories introduced single postal codes for their territory or major sub-sections of it. These are not UK postcodes, even though many are formatted in a similar fashion:
Other overseas territories have introduced their own more extensive postcode systems:
Civilian residential and business addresses in Akrotiri and Dhekelia
Akrotiri and Dhekelia, officially the Sovereign Base Areas of Akrotiri and Dhekelia (SBA),, ''Periochés Kyríarchon Váseon Akrotiríou ke Dekélias''; tr, Ağrotur ve Dikelya İngiliz Egemen Üs Bölgeleri is a British Overseas Territory o ...
are served by Cyprus Postal Services and use Cypriot postal codes.
Mail to Overseas Territories is treated as international if posted in the UK.
See also
*List of postcode areas in the United Kingdom by population
For the purposes of directing mail, the United Kingdom (although the populations listed just show figures for England, Wales and Northern Ireland), is divided by Royal Mail into postcode areas. The postcode area is the largest geographical unit u ...
*List of postcode districts in the United Kingdom
A ''list'' is any set of items in a row. List or lists may also refer to:
People
* List (surname)
Organizations
* List College, an undergraduate division of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America
* SC Germania List, German rugby unio ...
*Postcodes in the United Kingdom
Postal codes used in the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown dependencies are known as postcodes (originally, postal codes). They are alphanumeric and were adopted nationally between 11 October 1959 and 1974, having been de ...
*UK Postcode Regions by Population
For the purposes of directing mail, the United Kingdom (although the populations listed just show figures for England, Wales and Northern Ireland), is divided by Royal Mail into postcode areas. The postcode area is the largest geographical unit u ...
*List of Eircode routing areas in Ireland
The list of Eircode routing key areas in Ireland is a tabulation of the routing key areas used by An Post and other mail delivery services for the purposes of directing mail within Ireland. A routing key area "defines a principal post town" accord ...
Notes
References
External links
*Office for National Statistics
The Office for National Statistics (ONS; cy, Swyddfa Ystadegau Gwladol) is the executive office of the UK Statistics Authority, a non-ministerial department which reports directly to the UK Parliament.
Overview
The ONS is responsible for t ...
Postal geography
* OpenStreetMap
Postcode map
UK Business Lists - Map of UK Postcodes
*PostcodeArea
Demographics, maps, crime rates, house prices and local information for all UK postcodes
Strange Maps - Frank Jacobs - Diagrammatic Map
{{Postcode areas in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...
Areas
Area is the quantity that expresses the extent of a region on the plane or on a curved surface. The area of a plane region or ''plane area'' refers to the area of a shape or planar lamina, while '' surface area'' refers to the area of an op ...
Postcode areas in the United Kingdom
eo:Poŝtkodoj en Britio