What are the descriptions for each Address Element?

Organisation name

These are the names of organisations that are listed on PAF. This element is the combination of both Organisation and Department names.

Maximum field length = 120 characters

PO Box

A number of companies have a PO Box for one of two reasons. The first is because they wish their address to be withheld from the public in order to retain a degree of anonymity. However the organisation name is occasionally included and it is only the address, which becomes anonymous. A second reason for having a PO Box is to have the post pre-sorted before being delivered by Royal Mail. This typically happens in organisations which have large volumes of mail delivered each day to particular departments.

Maximum field length = 16 characters.

Premises name

A premises name may be the name of a house or the name of commercial premises.

Maximum field length = 50 characters

Premises number

This is the number that identifies the premises on a thoroughfare or dependent thoroughfare. Maximum field length = 4 characters

Sub-premises name/number

Where a premise is split into a number of flats, apartments or business units, PAF lists these against the premises name as separate delivery points. This can only exist when there is a premises name or number in the address.

Maximum field length = 30 characters

Thoroughfare

This is the street, which contains the delivery point, unless there is a dependent thoroughfare included in the address.

Maximum field length = 80 characters

Dependent thoroughfare

When a thoroughfare name exists more than once within a Post town, it is necessary to store additional information to uniquely identify each of them. For some small roads it is possible to make it dependent on an adjoining road. For example if we want to find 1 Gorse View in Saxmundham we see that there are two of them:

The second address shows that Gorse View is dependent on School Road to identify it in the absence of locality or postcode information.

Maximum field length = 80 characters

Dependent locality

When a thoroughfare exists more than once in a Post town, it is not always possible to make it dependent on another thoroughfare. In this case the thoroughfare is dependent on a locality. For example if we want to find 1 Back Lane in Huddersfield we see that there are three:

We identify the correct Back Lane by the dependent locality.

Maximum field length = 35 characters

Double dependent locality

When we need to use a dependent locality to identify a thoroughfare, it is also possible that it exists twice within the same locality. In this case the thoroughfare needs to be identified by a further locality, the double dependent locality. This is typically a village or hamlet. An example of this is Miry Lane in Huddersfield.

We identify Miry Lane by the double dependent locality within Holmfirth.

Maximum field length = 35 characters

Post town

This is the postal town for the address. It is worth noting that this may not always be the same as the administrative town boundary.

Maximum field length = 30 characters.

County

This is the postal county relating to an address. Note that this is not necessarily the same as the administrative county.

Maximum field length = 30 characters.

Postcode (full or partial)

On average a postcode relates to 15 premises. However it varies from 1 to 100 premises. Although it is becoming less common a postcode may cover more than one thoroughfare. This means that the combination of both premises number and postcode may not be enough to uniquely identify a delivery point. An example of this is the number 7 with the postcode DT10 1NA that can have the following addresses:

Maximum field length = 7 characters. However most people store it in a maximum of 8 characters to place a space between the incode and outcode.