Index of Place Names in Great Britain

July 2016 provides the temporal snapshot for this official gazetteer of place names across Great Britain. The dataset is published under the Open Government Licence and is hosted by the Government Digital Service, indicating its status as a public sector information asset. Its cross-platform presence on both UK and EU open data portals suggests it is a foundational reference dataset.

Use Cases

• Geocoding and address validation based on a standardized list of place names.
• Historical mapping analysis based on the July 2016 temporal snapshot.
• Enriching other datasets with geographic context based on named locations.
• Supporting demographic or economic studies that require consistent spatial referencing.

Strengths

• Published under the permissive Open Government Licence (OGL-UK-3.0).
• Originates from the authoritative Government Digital Service.
• Available on multiple official data platforms, indicating its reference status.

Limitations

• Column names and a precise row count are not provided in the available metadata.
• The data is a snapshot from July 2016 and may not reflect recent changes.
• The file size is listed but the specific data format (beyond HTML download page) is unclear.

Provenance

Source

Government Digital Service

Time Range

July 2016

Freshness

Last updated metadata indicates 2026-07-08, but the dataset itself is a snapshot from July 2016.

Geography

Great Britain