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Can you please tell me what is the postal code of England ..?? |
Travel Info Can you please tell me what is the postal code of England ..?? Travel Tips UK postal codes are known as postcodes. UK postcodes are alphanumeric. These codes were introduced by the Royal Mail over a 15-year period from 1959 to 1974 鈥?the full list is now available electronically from the Royal Mail as the Postcode Address File. They have been widely adopted not just for their original purpose of automating the sorting of mail but for many other purposes such as insurance premium calculations (known as the postcode lottery) and as a way to describe United Kingdom locations to route planning software. However, as the format of the codes does not achieve its objective of primarily identifying the main sorting office and sub-office they have been supplemented by a newer system of five-digit codes called Mailsort. Mail users who can deliver mail to the post office sorted by Mailsort code receive discounts, whilst delivery by postcode provides no such incentive. Postcode history The major cities of the UK have much older postcodes, now incorporated into the current system, than other areas. The first system of ten London postal districts identified by letters (W, WC, EC etc) was devised by Sir Rowland Hill and introduced in 1857 and 1858.[1] The numbered subdivisions (W1, W2 etc) were a war-time measure and date from 1917. The 1917 subdivisions remain important, because they form the first part of the two-part modern postcode (so N1 1AA is an address in the old N1 district), and because they continue to be used by Londoners to refer to their districts. In January 1959 the Post Office analysed the results of a survey on public attitudes towards the use of postal codes. The next step would be choose a town in which to experiment with coded addresses. The envisaged format was to be a six character alphanumeric code with three letters designating the geographical area and three numbers to identify the individual address.[2] On 28 July Ernest Marples, the Postmaster General, announced that Norwich had been selected, and that each of the 150,000 private and business addresses would receive a code by October. Norwich had been selected as it already had eight automatic mail sorting machines in use.[3] The codes were in the form NOR followed by three digits. In October 1965 it was confirmed that postal coding was to be extended to the rest of the country in the "next few years".[4] On 5 November 1966 post codes were introduced in Croydon. The codes for central Croydon started with the letters CRO, and those of the surrounding post towns with CR2, CR3 and CR4. This was to be the beginning of a ten year plan, costing an estimated 拢24 million. Within two years it was expected that coding would be used in Aberdeen, Belfast, Brighton, Bristol, Bromley, Cardiff, Coventry, Manchester, Newcastle upon Tyne, Newport, Reading, Sheffield, Southampton and the western district of London.[5] By 1967 codes had been introduced to Aberdeen, Southampton, Brighton and Derby.[6] In 1970 codes were introduced to the Western and North West London areas.[7] In December 1970 Christmas mail was franked with the message "Remember to use the Postcode", although codes were only used to sort mail in a handful of sorting offices.[8] During 1971 occupants of addresses began to receive notification of their postcode. Asked in the House of Commons about the completion of the coding exercise, the Postmaster General, Sir John Eden stated it was expected to be completed during 1972.[9] The scheme was finalised in 1974 when Norwich was completely re-coded but the scheme tested in Croydon was sufficiently close to the final design for it to be retained.[10] Newport was originally allocated NPT, in a similar way to Norwich and Croydon, with the surrounding towns allocated NP1-NP8. This lasted into the mid 1980s when for operational reasons (NPT being non-standard, and too similar to NP7) it was recoded. The legacy of the Croydon trial can still be seen today: CR0 was the only postal district with a zero in that position: all others start with 1. This caused one of the PAF (see above) software products produced by the Royal Mail themselves to misbehave slightly. Subsequently, the "zeroth" district has been used in some other postcode areas, such as Bolton, Harrow and the Dengie peninsula in Essex. A separate postal "district", CR9 is used for large users and PO Box holders. This policy has been used elsewhere, with normal postcodes "growing" upwards from district 1 and large-user postcodes "growing" downwards from district 99. The CR0 district contains far more addresses than any other postal district in the country. CR1 has never been used 鈥?possibly left spare for rationalisation. (The other CR districts, CR2 etc. were coded later and conform to the general standards.) There was at one point a movement to change all CR0 postcodes to CR1, but this was rejected. CR0 is often incorrectly written as CRO, although in some type faces the digit '0' and letter 'O' are identical -- the problem is exacerbated as it is often pronounced 'Sea Arr Oh' rather than 'Sea Arr Zero'. Format The format of UK postcodes is generally: A9 9AA A99 9AA A9A 9AA AA9 9AA AA99 9AA AA9A 9AA where A signifies a letter and 9 a digit. It is a hierarchical system, working from left to right 鈥?the first letter or pair of letters represents the area, the following digit or digits represent the district within that area, and so on. Each postcode generally represents a street, part of a street, or a single premises. This feature makes the postcode useful to route planning software. The part of the code before the space is the outward code or out code used to direct mail from one sorting office to the destination sorting office, while the part after the space is the inward code or in code used to sort the mail into individual delivery rounds, each separate code usually identifying the address to within 80 properties (with an average of 14 properties per postal code), although a large business may have a unique code. The outward code can be split further into the area part (letters identifying one of 124 postal areas) and the district part (usually numbers); similarly, the inward code is split into the sector part (number) and the unit part (letters). Source(s): http://www.answers.com/uk%20postcodes... Other Travel Tips England has many postal codes - it depends on exactly where in England. There is not a postal code for England as a whole. There are postal codes for places within Britain. If you have the address details you can find the postcode through the Royal mail website: http://www.royalmail.com/ |
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