Owen Boswarva's blog

This is the latest in a series of blog posts about the campaign for open address data in the UK. Previous posts are listed at the bottom.

In this post, I highlight the latest version of an open address dataset published by North Devon Council.

Background

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/

Release from North Devon Council

North Devon Council in the South West region of England has, for some time, been publishing its Council Tax address list on a quarterly basis on the Council's open data website.

Only a small number of councils publish their Council Tax lists proactively. I first became aware of North Devon's dataset last month after I submitted requests for the data.

Following correspondence, the Council has kindly added local property references and Unique Property Reference Numbers (UPRNs) to the latest published version of the dataset (July 2026). The addition of the UPRNs means that the dataset is suitable for geocoding at the property level.

The Council has confirmed on its website and in correspondence that the dataset may be re-used under the terms of the Open Government Licence.

You can download my correspondence with the Council: CT_address_list_North_Devon_FOI_12432_[NO_DATA_correspondence_only].zip (1.01 MB).

Thanks to Council staff for facilitating the publication and open licensing of this data.

Access to this dataset

The two most recent quarterly releases of North Devon Council's Council Tax address dataset are currently available on the Council's open data website.

The quarterly releases are published and removed on a rolling basis. I recommend downloading the July 2026 version now if you think you might want to re-use that data in the future. It is possible that the Council will include the UPRNs in future releases but it has not committed to doing so.

The Council's reference for the correspondence that I initiated on 1 July 2026 is FOI 12432.

More about North Devon Council's address dataset

North Devon Council has published the July 2026 release of its Council Tax address dataset in the form of a CSV file 'Dataset All Council Tax Properties 01 07 2026.csv' that contains 50,093 records. Each record includes the full address (in five fields), postcode, Council Tax band, local property reference, and Unique Property Reference Number (UPRN), for a domestic property in the North Devon Council area.

The information in the list seems to be well-maintained. UPRNs are missing for 24 of the 50,093 records. Roughly 47% of the UPRNs contain leading zeroes that should be removed prior to matching with other datasets.

50,068 (99.95%) of the 50,093 records can be matched via the UPRNs to records in the August 2026 release of Ordnance Survey's OS Open UPRN product. This means that almost all of the property records in the dataset can be geocoded for mapping and geographic analysis of domestic properties in the North Devon Council area.