Post town
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A post town is a required part of all postal addresses in the United Kingdom, and a basic unit of the postal delivery system.[1] Including the correct post town in the address increases the chances of a letter or parcel being delivered on time.
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Organisation
There are approximately 1,500 post towns which are organised at the convenience of the Royal Mail. Each post town usually corresponds to one or more postal districts and each post town can cover an area including many individual towns and villages. Post towns rarely correspond to political boundaries and often group places that for all other purposes are quite separate.
In some places several post towns correspond to a single postal district with each post town covering one or more postcode sectors. There are anomalous examples where post towns and post codes do not coincide. For example, the post code sector EH14 5 is within three post towns: Juniper Green, Currie and Balerno, while Balerno is also within other sectors, such as EH14 7.
Usage
The Royal Mail states that the post town must be included on all items and should be printed in capitals.[2]
- 1 Vallance Road
- LONDON
- E2 1AA
The system means that some addresses will have post towns that correspond to a place nearby, or cover a very large area. The use of post towns means that it is no longer necessary to include the former postal county in a postal address.
Dependent locality
In some places in order to give further direction an additional 'dependent locality' is added above the post town giving a more specific location name. In most cases, including in the LONDON post town, this is not a required part of the address. However, if no postcode is used, or if the sorting machine rejects the letter, the use of locality will significantly speed up manual sorting.
- 1 Vallance Road
- Bethnal Green
- LONDON
- E2 1AA
In a limited number of places a second 'double dependent locality' line is also required. Dependent localities are usually only in place where there is more than one road with the same name covered by a post town or postal district.
VIA
Traditionally, where a place was served by a post town entirely distinct from its location the text 'via' or 'near' was added before the post town. Such as:
- 1 High Street
- Sewardstone
- VIA LONDON
- E4 1AA
However, the Royal Mail discourage this usage[1] because of the risk of additional characters affecting the performance of their optical character recognition technology.
References
- ^ a b Royal Mail, Address Management Guide, (2004)
- ^ Royal Mail Postal Advice - Help and advice for sending items
External links
- List of UK post towns (as of 2007)
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