Uniquely Identifying Scottish Properties

A property is an addressable location:

– with a typical postal address such as a residential or commercial building.

– without a typical postal address such as a bus shelter, electricity substation and advertising hoarding.

An alternative to using postal addresses for property identification is to use unique identifiers. Some systems of uniquely identifying Scottish properties are introduced below.

Unique Property Reference Number (UPRN)

UPRNs are:

“authoritative unique numeric identifiers (between 1 and 999,999,999,999) for every addressable location in Great Britain that bring property and address information together. “

UPRNs provide:

“a comprehensive, complete, consistent identifier throughout a property’s life cycle – from planning permission through to demolition.”

Introduced over 20 years ago, UPRNs are assigned by Local Authorities and once allocated to an address, UPRNs are never re-used.

Scottish Distribution of UPRNs

Currently there are approximately 3,709,538 UPRNs listed for the mainland and islands of Scotland. Using the location of these UPRNs as a proxy indicator for the built environment, the map below shows the number of properties and number of properties per 1,000 people in each Scottish local authority.

The following chart shows the number of properties from an urban, small town and rural perspective.

Importance of UPRNs

In 2016, the Minister for Cabinet Office stated:

“The UPRN is the jewel at the heart of the addressing system. It links address data across a diverse range of systems and services. The UPRN facilitates greater accuracy and immediate data sharing and matching – delivering better services and better outcomes for citizens.”

Furthermore, at the GeoPlace conference in 2017, Eddie Copeland, the then Director of Government Innovation in the Innovation Lab at NESTA, highlighted the need for the public sector to use UPRNs as part of their wider data linking and information sharing initiatives:

“If you don’t have the UPRN you are making your life impossibly difficult. The future of local government, the future of public services, the future of our communities depends on this – connecting data for better outcomes. For that you need UPRNs, they are absolutely vital.”

As of July 2020, UPRNs are the Government Digital Service mandated public sector standard for referencing and sharing property information. More information is available from the UK government’s guidance on identifying property and street information and in 02 April 2020’s press release from the Geospatial Commission.

On the 31 Jan 2021 the Regulation of Property Agents Working Group (RoPA) published UPRN residential declaration stating:

“In short, we believe that the wide market adoption of the UPRN delivers many major benefits to UK society, the residential sector and to Government and if implemented effectively may help position the UK as the world’s leading market.”

See also research from GeoPlace on the role of UPRNs in delivering health and social care during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Accessing UPRNs

UPRN updates are released every six weeks as open data in the following products:

Source	Description
Ordnance Survey Open UPRN	A list of each UPRN with its Easting, Northing, Latitude, and Longitude.
National Statistics UPRN Lookups (NSUL)	Relates the UPRN for each address to a range of area geographies via ‘best-fit’ allocation from 2011 Census Output Areas (OA).
Office of National Statistics (ONS) UPRN Directory (ONSUD)	Relates the UPRN for each address to a range of area geographies via point in polygon analysis.

In addition, FindMyAddress provides a UPRN search service and IdealPostCodes provides both a UPRN search service along with an API for programmatic UPRN access.

UPRNs and the Royal Mail Delivery Points and Multiple Properties

UPRNs are different from, and should not be confused with, the Royal Mail’s Unique Delivery Point Reference Number (UDPRN). The purpose of a UDPRN being to consistently identify a delivery point of a premise associated with the Royal Mail’s Postcode Address File (PAF). There is however a one to one relationship between a UPRN and a UDPRN.

An additional complexity is also introduced by the Royal Mail’s Unique Multiple Properties Reference Number (UMPRN).

Both a UDPRN API and a UMPRN API are available.

Topological Identifier (TOID)

TOIDs are:

“authoritative unique and persistent reference identifiers (13-16 digits long and prefixed by ‘osgb’) for every feature in Great Britain that appears in OS MasterMap products”

Introduced in 2001, TOIDs are assigned by the Ordnance Survey and once allocated to a feature TOIDs are never re-used. However, if the feature dramatically changes then it receives a new TOID which enables changes to features to be tracked over time.

Properties are likely to have multiple TOIDs i.e. railway stations. Properties and their TOIDs are contained within the OS MasterMap Topography Layer.

Accessing TOIDs

TOID updates are released every six weeks as open data in the following product:

Source	Description
OS Open TOID	A list of each TOID with its source OS Master Map product, version number, version date, Easting and Northing

Relationship between TOIDs and UPRNs

The Ordnance Survey Open Linked Identifiers product provides the authoritative relationship between TOIDs and UPRNs (and other important persistent identifiers) and is available as a download and an API.