Support partial postcodes (first half)

[mariongalley]

I understand postcodes don't map to other geographic areas like wards, but is it possible to look up LA or at least Region/Nation based on the first half of a UK postcode?

[drkane]

Good Q.

For region/nationit's pretty good - there are 3,100 postcode outcodes (ie KT1) in the UK. 93% of them can be mapped to a single region/nation - so roughly 230 that can't.

For local authorities it's trickier - less than half (43%) are in one local authority, 32% in two and 22% in three or more. PE28 and DE7 both cover seven local authority areas!

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All that said - it should be fairly easy to add the partial postcodes as areas to find that postcode - the trickier thing would be adding them as postcodes, for the reasons above.

[mariongalley]

@drkane Thanks so much for looking into it!

it should be fairly easy to add the partial postcodes as areas to find that postcode - the trickier thing would be adding them as postcodes, for the reasons above.

What are the implications of adding postcode outcodes as areas vs postcodes? Would the 360Giving Datastore be able to look up Regions/Nations in one scenario but not the other?