Listed in PAF Are Names of Companies, Organisations and Departments. This Organisation Information Can Be Useful and Appropriate for Specific Use Cases
Updated 30 Dec 2020
Royal Mail's PAF lists organisations that are present at an address, providing information such as the name, department name and organisational specifics about the delivery point.
Before asking what kind of organisation data you wish to search for, it is helpful to disambiguate whether you are searching for:
In order for an organisation to be listed on the PAF, it must inform Royal Mail of its presence. Royal Mail will subsequently verify the presence of that organisation and may subsequently insert into an organisation record for that address.
For larger organisations, a premise may receive a postcode for itself. In these instances, it's designated as a "Large User".
Updates to whether an organisation occupies a premise are not actively managed by Royal Mail. Royal Mail relies on the public and business operators to report these changes.
If not reported, it is possible for:
PAF is not a good resource for finding the registered address of an organisation. Instead, you should use the Companies House dataset.
The dataset from Companies House bears the following advantages:
The Postcode Address File contains 4 datapoints pertaining to organisational information.
Simply the name of the organisation. E.g. "University College London"
Any applicable department name registered at that address. E.g. "Language Sciences"
postcode_type
su_organisation_indicator
A commercial premise can be identified as having a Small User Organiation Indicator value of Y
or Postcode Type of L
.
A residential premise will have an empty Small User Organisation Indicator value and Postcode Type of S
.
It is possible to query for a particular postcode_type
or su_organisation_indicator
by attaching them as filters to a request.
postcode_type
Append postcode_type=
to your request
https://api.ideal-postcodes.co.uk/v1/addresses?api_key=iddqd&q=10&postcode_type=L
su_organisation_indicator
Append su_organisation_indicator=
to your request
https://api.ideal-postcodes.co.uk/v1/addresses?api_key=iddqd&q=10&su_organisation_indicator=Y