UK Postcode to 2011 Census Geographies Best-Fit Lookup

A 24 MB lookup table provides a best-fit mapping between UK postcodes and frozen 2011 Census geographies, including Output Areas (OA), Lower and Middle Layer Super Output Areas (LSOA, MSOA), and current Local Authority Districts (LAD) as of August 2021. The mapping is created by plotting the mean address location of each postcode into the boundaries of the target geographies. Columns include postcode variants (PCD7, PCD8, PCDS), introduction/termination dates, user type, and codes and names for all geographic levels.

Use Cases

• Aggregating address-level data to census Output Areas for 2011-based demographic analysis.
• Linking customer or service data to Lower/Middle Layer Super Output Areas for neighborhood-level profiling.
• Assigning postcodes to current Local Authority Districts for local government reporting and resource allocation.
• Analyzing postcode lifecycle and user type (e.g., small vs. large user) for address data management.

Strengths

• Provides a direct, best-fit mapping between four key UK statistical geographies and postcodes, a foundational linkage for many analyses.
• Includes multiple postcode formats (7-character, 8-character, and spaced) and temporal fields (DOINTR, DOTERM) for tracking changes.
• Cross-platform presence (uk_data, eu_open_data) signals established importance and reliability for UK data users.

Limitations

• Sources conflict on the reference date for the local authority districts: one platform states August — 2021, another states August — 2019.
• Key metadata such as row count, specific license, and precise author are missing from all provided sources.
• The geographic hierarchies are frozen to the 2011 Census definitions, which may not align with more recent boundary changes.

Provenance

Source

Office for National Statistics

Collection Method

Best-fit lookup generated by plotting the mean address location of each postcode into the geographic boundaries.

Time Range

Postcode data aligned with local authority districts as of August 2021 (conflicting source cites August 2019). Census geographies are frozen to 2011 definitions.

Freshness

The dataset was last updated on the uk_data platform on 2026-04-08, though this likely refers to metadata refresh rather than data content from 2021.

Geography

United Kingdom