Postal code: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 04:04, 23 December 2024

Revision as of 19:19, 16 January 2025

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Larger businesses and isolated properties such as farms may have a unique postcode. Extremely large organisations such as larger government offices or bank headquarters may have multiple postcodes for different departments.

There are about 100121 postcode areas in the UK, ranging widely in size from [[BT postcode area|BT]] which covers the whole of Northern Ireland to [[WC postcode area|WC]] for a small part of [[Central London]]. Postcode areas occasionally cross national boundaries, such as [[SY postcode area|SY]] which covers a large, predominantly rural area from [[Shrewsbury]] and [[Ludlow]] in [[Shropshire]], England, through to the seaside town of [[Aberystwyth]], [[Ceredigion]] on [[Wales]]' west coast. There are a number of special purpose postcode areas that are "non-gegraphic" and which provide special routing instructions (such as parcel returns to online retailers). The three Crown dependencies and Gibralter also use UK formatted postcodes. Some Bristish Overseas Territories have adopted a single postcode for their territory that is very similar to the UK format.

==== United States ====

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[[San Marino]] and the [[Vatican City]] are part of the [[Italy|Italian]] postcode system, while [[Liechtenstein]] similarly uses the [[Switzerland|Swiss]] system, as do the Italian exclave of [[Campione d'Italia]] and the German exclave of [[Büsingen am Hochrhein]], although they also form part of their respective countries' postal code systems.

The [[Czech Republic]] and [[Slovakia]] still use the codes of the former [[Czechoslovakia]], their ranges not overlapping. In 2004–2006, Slovakia prepared a reform of the system but the plan was postponed and maybemay have been abandoned. In the Czech Republic, there was no significant effort to modify the system.

== Non-geographic codes ==

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:VAT Central Unit

:BX5 5AT<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/hm-revenue-customs/contact/vat-insolvency|title=VAT: insolvency|website=gov.uk|access-date=2 May 2018|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180106095712/https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/hm-revenue-customs/contact/vat-insolvency|archive-date=6 January 2018}}</ref>

The XX postcode is sued for parcel returns. The BF psotcode is used for Bristish Forces Post Office (BFPO) addresses.

A fictional address is also used by Royal Mail for letters to Santa Claus, more commonly known as Santa or Father Christmas: