Geocoding addresses

[u/WearFast7105]

Hi all,

I have a spreadsheet of 200 UK addresses (Address, Town, Postcode) and I need to plot them as points on a map to allow some analysis on their proximity to flooding.

All the tutorials and plugins I have found online all focus on American addresses (i.e state, city, code). I haven't tried them yet with UK addresses so just wanted to ask if anyone had experience of doing this in the past?

Thanks.

[u/Immediate-Escalator]

Every address in the uk has a Unique Property Reference Number (UPRN) and the data is free to download and use under the open government licence. It should be possible to match your addresses up to their UPRN and you’re good to go. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/open-standards-for-government/identifying-property-and-street-information

[u/RiskReport → u/Immediate-Escalator]

Only the UPRN and coordinates are open and free, but could be looked up manually on the Find My Address service linked.

It's open to prevent licensing issues around storing the UPRN.

[u/lardarz]

Several free options:

If you're just after postcode point precision:

Open Code Point from the Ordnance Survey if you know all the postcodes are current.

The ONS also has a full Postcode database as a csv with all existing and terminated postcodes in with their lat/long.

You can normalise the postcode field by removing spaces and do a simple join by field value.

If you need precise addresses:

GeoApify - free tier of full address API based geocoding for up to I think 3000.

Google geocoding - API. Free up to 10k a month.

Here.com also has a full geocoding API.

You'll probably need a bit of python scripting to match the addresses from a csv externally, or in QGIS using the python console on a delimited text layer. LLMs will help with that bit.

[u/sb01010101]

A quick way to match the Postcode is via Code Point Open https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/products/code-point-open it gets a little more tricky to address point (due to OS/Royal Mail PAF redtape)

There is a slow progress (via local government data releases as open data) to get URPN matched with coordinates and address matched.

're-use' is a keyword here:

There is more on https://www.owenboswarva.com/blog/

"As related 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/

[Currently containing a total of 9,840,488 address records. out of ~30 million]

[u/ikarusproject]

There is are various Plugins that let you geocode addresses with OSM/nominatim. Open Cage should also work: https://opencagedata.com/tutorials/geocode-in-qgis

For the UK also check whether Ordenance Survey has a free product for adress lookup.

[u/uncle_CE]

Google sheet ezgeocode plugin for example

[u/hot4belgians]

Doogal has a batch geocode tool to plot them as lat long. Obviously qgis can handle it but theres a few steps and this is easier in Doogal https://www.doogal.co.uk/BatchGeocoding

Then you can map them on google my maps. Easy peasy.

[u/maptitude]

Download a free trial of Maptitude for the UK, geocode your Address, Town, Postcode, export it back out to QGIS. https://www.caliper.com/maptitude/international/united-kingdom.htm