London Banter - View Single Post - [OT] Postal counties to be dropped from the Postcode Address File

[email protected] · August 1st 10, 01:56 PM posted to uk.transport.london

In article ,
(Trolleybus) wrote:

The whole thing's a mess, due as others have hinted to people
taking the Royal Mail's version of the postal address as being
incontrovertible evidence as to the administrative area. This has a
whole raft of unintended consequences.

There was a very vigorous campaign in the local press a while back
from the village of Eastwick, just north of Harlow. They wanted
their address changed from Harlow, Essex to a Herts one as they
seemed to think that they were too good for a Harlow address. The
Royal Mail would have none of it.

I live in the converse: an Essex village with a Herts. address. I'm
happy with that, but the residents of East Herts. should be
concerned that their council tax pays for me to get East herts
propoganda sheets shoved through my door from time to time,
although that may be postcode rather than postal address related.

But the big problem is organisations that arrange services
geographically, as others have said. I've lost count of the times
I've had to explain "Yes, my address DOES say Bishop's Stortford,
Herts. But no, I live in Essex". It's even been a problem with the
police, although I hope modern technology has improved matters in
that particular case.

The real problem is the clueless nature of some organisations and
their systems. Will things really get better once we get in the
habit of not adding the county to addresses? I suspect they'll use
postcodes instead. With sufficient granularity that could be fine.
OTOH it could easily be a huge mess.

He, he. At least you don't live in Melbourn, Royston, Herts (actually in
Cambridgeshire as Roland says) and have your mail sent via Melbourne,
Victoria, Australia!

--
Colin Rosenstiel