Right then, you may or may not know that I am developing a project called HowBad.is.it. One of the things that was planned for the website is a cinema postcode search. You type in your UK postcode, and ping, back comes a list of the cinemas nearest you.

My initial ideas were that I needed to find / work out some complex function that will convert a postcode into the easting and northing co-ordinates. But once I had set off into Google seeing what I can find, I actually realised I was going in compleatly the wrong direction.

After a bit of digging, it turns out it is actually quite simple, all you need is a table of all the UK postcodes with their co-ordinates. When the user enters their postcode, you find the postcode in your table and return the co-ordinates, et voila, you have the basics of your postcode search.

The next challenge was to find this postcode data, so I set off in my search. It didn't take long to get my answer, the UK postcode data is controlled and published by one company in the whole of the UK, The Royal Mail, which in short, can only spell problems. With the Royal Mail in control of this data, it means they can do whatever they want with it, including the pricing. And let me tell you, whoever decided how much to charge the public, was not in a good mood the day they decided this.

Now Royal Mail offer a few different packages off the data they hold, all ranging in prices. The dataset I am after is whats called the GIS Base Table. In short it holds all of the postcodes in the UK with their OSGR Easting and OSGR Northing co-ordinates, perfect for what I need to do. They then allow you to choose how many updates you wish to get per year, I have a nice list of the updates with its cost below:

• One-off supply (No updates) - £350
• One update per year - £350
• Two updates per year - £525
• Four updates per year - £875
• Twelve updates per year - £1312.50

Now looking at that, I would be more then happy to spend £350 a year on the data, but the real kick in the teeth comes when Royal Mail slap an extra £600 on the top for using the data on the internet.

The question that comes to my mind as I am writing this now is why? Why charge so much for this data, when data like this is freely available in countries like the USA and Canada. By charging a ridiculous sum of money, they are just halting what could be some cool projects and ideas because people can't afford to pay for the licensing fees. To me it is all just stupid and some questions need to be asked down at Royal Mail.

There is a small glimmer of hope. People are setting out to create their own lists of Postcodes which they are releasing into the public domain for free downloads. The best one I have found and will be using is New Popular Edition Maps. From what I have seen so far they have created a great service, its really quick and simple to add your own postcode if it isn't there already.

Its been a bit of a long rant, but its well worth it. If your still reading this, then thanks for reading, any comments then the form to submit is just below!

Matt Godwin