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 Tandridge District Council.

Background

As related in previous posts, I have been requesting Council Tax address datasets from 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 Tandridge District Council

The latest council to release its Council Tax address list is Tandridge District Council in the South East region of England.

The Council disclosed all of the requested information the day after I submitted my requests, without any difficulties. However, it took some time to get a compliant response to my re-use request.

Following an internal review the Council has granted permission for re-use of the local property references, full property addresses (excluding postcodes), and Council Tax bands in the Council Tax list under the terms of the Open Government Licence (OGL).

However, the Council maintains that it is not in a position to license the UPRNs for re-use.

I have pointed out that, even if the Council considers that Ordnance Survey owns rights in the local set of UPRNs, OS's Open Identifiers policy authorises the Council to license UPRNs appended to its own data under the OGL. But the Council has evidently been given bad advice by Ordnance Survey itself:

"'As for the OS UPRN data, this isn't necessary to share as it is already freely available to members of the public.' OS Open UPRN | Data Products | OS"

You can download my correspondence with the Council: CT_address_list_Tandridge_00280569_[NO_DATA_correspondence_only].zip (0.88 MB).

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

Access to this dataset

I am not publishing any part of Tandridge District 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 Tandridge District Council were submitted on 17 August 2026 and the Council's reference is 00280569.

More about Tandridge District Council's address dataset

Tandridge District Council has disclosed its Council Tax address dataset to me in an Excel workbook '00280569.xlsx' that each contain 38,709 records. The combined list includes the full address and postcode (combined in a single field), Council Tax valuation band, local property reference, and UPRN for a domestic property in the Tandridge District Council area.

The information in the list seems to be well-maintained. UPRNs are missing for 177 records.

As a practical matter, the Council Tax address dataset can be geocoded by matching the UPRNs to an open national list of UPRNs available from ONS. Point coordinates and postcodes from the ONS list could be appended to the Council's list of local property references and full addresses (without the postcodes supplied by the Council), and that output would contain only open data.

However, the Council has not granted permission for re-use of the UPRNs. It is a matter of legal judgement whether the exercise of using the UPRNs locally for matching purposes, with the intention of publishing or otherwise re-using the open output, is "re-use" that requires permission from rightholders.