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 describe a new open address dataset released by Ceredigion County Council.

Background

As related in previous posts, I have been requesting Council Tax address datasets from local authorities in England and Wales, 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 Ceredigion County Council

The latest council to release its Council Tax address list is Ceredigion County Council in Wales.

The Council disclosed most of the requested information within a couple of weeks of my requests, but the local property references were garbled due to a technical issue and the Council did not disclose the Unique Property Reference Numbers (UPRNs) corresponding to the properties on the list.

After further correspondence the Council provided an updated data file with the correct local references. However, the Council has withheld the UPRNs on the basis of exemptions in sections 12 and 43(2) of the FOI Act.

With regard to section 12, the Council has said:

"The information requested requires the Council to identify and verify links between Council Tax property records and Unique Property Reference Numbers (UPRNs). The Council has established that a significant number of records do not currently have a corresponding verified match. In order to provide an accurate response, officers would be required to undertake substantial manual checking, validation and reconciliation of records across multiple datasets.

"The Service has advised that approximately 4,000 to 5,000 records would require further examination and validation before a reliable cross-reference dataset could be produced. This work would involve locating, reviewing and verifying individual records to determine whether an accurate relationship exists between the data held. The Council estimates that the time required to undertake this exercise would exceed the statutory appropriate limit of £450, equivalent to 18 hours of staff time at the prescribed rate of £25 per hour."

With regard to section 43(2), the Council has said:

"The information requested concerns address-related datasets and associated property reference information. The Council understands that elements of the addressing data used to create, maintain and validate its property records have been derived from or influenced by datasets supplied under licence from third parties, including addressing products and datasets subject to intellectual property rights and licensing restrictions. The Council has received specialist advice indicating that address data of this nature is likely to contain third-party intellectual property and should not normally be disclosed where it has been derived from, updated using, or maintained through such products.

"Disclosure would be likely to undermine the commercial interests of the owners and licensors of that information by placing data, or information derived from licensed data, into the public domain without the licensing controls under which it is supplied. This would prejudice the value of the intellectual property and the commercial arrangements that exist for the provision and use of such data."

If the Council had relied only on section 43(2), I would have requested an internal review. I do not think it is plausible that disclosure of the UPRNs would prejudice the commercial interests of Ordnance Survey or any other third party, given that OS's Open Identifiers policy permits members of the Public Sector Geospatial Agreement (which includes Ceredigion County Council) to release UPRNs appended to their own data under the terms of the Open Government Licence.

Given that the Council's rationale for applying the section 43(2) exemption to the UPRNs mentioned "specialist advice" about "address data" I asked the Council to clarify the extent of its permission for re-use of the information in the disclosed Council Tax list, which includes full addresses. The Council has confirmed that its grant of permission for re-use of the disclosed information under the terms of the Open Government Licence v3.0 applies to all of the disclosed information.

You can download my correspondence with the Council: CT_address_list_Ceredigion_FOI-2708_[NO_DATA_correspondence_only].zip (1.8 MB).

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

Access to this dataset

I am not publishing Ceredigion County Council's address dataset here, due to the non-specific but lingering risk of further unsubstantiated claims of infringement from Ordnance Survey and GeoPlace LLP. You can read more about that issue in my blog post in May.

However, there is nothing to stop you asking the Council directly for a copy of the data file. For tips on submitting access to information and re-use requests see this other blog post. My requests to Ceredigion County Council were submitted on 1 September 2026 and the Council's reference is FOI/2708.

More about Ceredigion County Council's address dataset

Ceredigion County Council has disclosed its Council Tax address dataset to me in the form of an Excel workbook 'FOI #2708 Live CTax Properties.xlsx' that contains 38,219 records. Each record includes the full address (in four fields), postcode, Council Tax valuation band, and local property reference for a domestic property in the Ceredigion County Council area.

The information in the list seems to be well-maintained. As UPRNs have not been supplied, the records cannot be geocoded at property level using open data sources.