Royal Mail postcode lottery

Thursday 08 October 2009 | By Heidi Scott, Gosh! Media Copywriter

The Royal Mail has threatened legal action against Ernestmarples.com, which has been supplying postcode data to a number of websites.

In response, Ernestmarples.com – cheekily named after the Postmaster General who oversaw the introduction of postcodes way back in 1959 – has closed its postcode feed to the sites, which include Job Centre Pro Plus (which helps people find jobs), HealthWare (which locates nearby pharmacies and hospitals), Planning alerts.com (which monitors planning applications) and Straight Choice (which reveals the sources of political leaflets).

On the BBC News website, Royal Mail defended the legal action, saying it was required to stop "unauthorised access" to the postcode data. In a statement, Royal Mail explained, "We have not asked anyone to close down a website. We have simply asked a third party to stop allowing unauthorised access to Royal Mail data, in contravention of our intellectual property rights."

Ernestmarples.com commented that it did not have the resources to fight a legal battle and so had been forced to turn off its feed. Usually, firms wanting to use the Royal Mail's regularly updated list of 1.7 million postcodes must pay the organisation a licence fee of about £4000 per annum for access rights.

Harry Metcalfe, co-founder of Ernestmarples.com, refused to say how the company had been acquiring the postcode data. "There are certain legal questions around the specifics of what we are doing," he admitted to the BBC. "The advice we have received so far is that allowing the service to continue operating while we attempt to resolve this issue would be unwise."

In the meantime, Ernestmarples.com is looking to use alternative, free sources of postcode data, although these are known to be – pardon the pun –second-class in terms of accuracy.

Commenting on the spat, Jim Killock, who heads up the digital issues campaign organisation, Open Rights Group, said, "It is easy to see that large numbers of small business ideas and not-for-profit services are being blocked by these licence fees. It is, in effect, a tax on innovation."

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