What is a Unique ‘Large User’ Postcode?

March 20, 2012 - PRLog -- There are two types of postcodes in the UK, the small user postcode, which is what most of our homes fall under, approximately 1.6 million.  There are also large user postcodes of which total around 0.14 million.

So what is a unique large user postcode; well the Royal Mail will consider issuing a business with a unique postcode if they received at least 500 items of mail a day.   The Royal Mail says, “Some organisations who received such large volumes of mail can have unique postcodes to ensure that their mail to a individual address is correctly segregated.”

The Royal Mail have been successfully delivering to some 29 million addresses or as they like to call them ‘delivery points’ using the postcodes that we know today since the late 1970s.  Although postcodes have been around for a few years more than that with London introducing the first postcodes as far back as 1957!

Today each postcode covers on average around 15 properties, although in reality it can be anywhere between 1 and 100 houses.  Organisations or businesses that receive large volumes of mail, the ‘large user’ postcodes are allocated individual postcodes, these also include PO Box addresses.  

Postcodes don’t usually change but they are not carved in stone, there are several reasons why the Royal Mail could amend a postcode.  New houses and properties are constantly being built and old ones are being demolished, so the Royal Mail sometimes has to rename or recode existing postcode areas to ensure mail is delivered in the most efficient way.  Postcodes are therefore added, deleted and changed; one recent example is the new Olympic Park in London for the 2012 Olympics, which was issued the new postcode of E20.

There is no need to worry though if Royal Mail writes to let you know about changes to your postcode, as they will ensure that their sorting machines will recognise both your old and new postcodes for around 12 months.  Therefore you have plenty of time to let everyone know of the changes without losing any mail.

Postcodes are more important than ever with today’s online marketplace, and one way to ensure that everyone has the correct UK postal information is to use a postcode software package.   Simply Postcode Lookup offer software packages for postcodes on the web (http://www.simply-postcode-lookup.com/for_web.htm) or desktop postcode software (http://www.simply-postcode-lookup.com/windows_desktop_sof...) for further information contact Simply Postcode Lookup.

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