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[Weaver]

I emailed the Highland Council and asked them to change their databases because they had got the name of my old house spelled wrong, probably from time immemorial. They were great. Fixed it. Just trying to get the name of my village spelled correctly in my address too. They have already don't the right thing in respect of the village name because it is spelled correctly now on the  council's very own sign at the entrance to the village.

Anyway, one very useful thing I found out by accident. Apparently I have a thing called a Unique Property Reference Number (UPRN). Don't know what the universal set is in which it is unique.

So you might find this useful too some day. I think they should be used a lot more, since postal addresses are so useless unless you are the actual postman who really knows the patch, because the entire of our village is one single postcode, such low res that it is. So it doesn't help white van man or random visitors at all. The UPRN could be plugged into some app, on your phone say, or used in a query sent over the internet and turned into coordinates.

[chenks]

they are only unique in terms of the council or housing assocation.
there is no "universal" naming policy for them.

i work with them almost every day and the variations between different authorities can be great.
some authorities don't even use/have them.

[Ronski]

There  is the what 3 words system, every 3 x 3 meter square on the planet has its own 3 unique words.

https://what3words.com

[jelv]

Every address in the UK has a unique delivery point suffix allocated in the full Postal Address File - shame it isn't used more!

[sevenlayermuddle]

I had never heard of UPRN, it is an interesting concept.

I’d be interested to know how it is structured, ie does it include a checksum to ensure that wrongly transcribed numbers are (probably) rendered invalid?

And/or, could they contrive it such that a single digit error in any decimal column, even it it generated a valid address, would still be a property closeby?    Not at all sure that is mathematically possible, but who knows, numbers are full of surprises, so it might be?

[chenks]

I had never heard of UPRN, it is an interesting concept.

I’d be interested to know how it is structured, ie does it include a checksum to ensure that wrongly transcribed numbers are (probably) rendered invalid?

And/or, could they contrive it such that a single digit error in any decimal column, even it it generated a valid address, would still be a property closeby?    Not at all sure that is mathematically possible, but who knows, numbers are full of surprises, so it might be?

there is no defined structure and it can totally different between authorities.
usually it's just an abrevation of the street, area and house number.

UPRN is not a standardised thing, it's a made up unique reference of a particular property so that the authority in question can identify it on their own systems.