BBC postcodes

Many government departments, agencies or publicly-funded bodies have specific post codes which differ from those of their actual location according to normal rules.

The most obvious historical one was 'GIR 0AA' used by Girobank as a return address when it issued benefit cheques.

BS99, NE99, PL98 etc were not created using normal postcode allocation rules. They are central locations (the main sorting office) where post is either sorted/opened by Royal Mail or collected and transferred to an outsourced agency who carry out that function.

No doubt someone with more knowledge of Royal Mail/Post Office functions can shed light on when these first came into being and how many are still left.

Wikipedia has a decent page on postcodes and special postcodes in particular http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postcodes_in_the_United_Kingdom#Special_postcodes

My Googling skills need some polishing, obviously, as I couldn't find a quick link to that.

It's where I got the information on The Queen's postcode from, which is why it was on my radar Given that page says special postcodes are "bought" I'm surprised no-ones asked the BBC how much it costs and why it can't just use the standard postcode for Portland Place...

Actually, it says that:


Buckingham Palace having SW1A 1AA I was aware of, but you will find that the sorting office of any postal town/city has the same 'x(x)1 1AA' postcode.

Ah, sorry forgive me .. I've been up a very long time!

A little background, I seem to remember being told that all newly located large businesses used to be volume tested by a GPO team, if they met the threshold according to the test they were allocated unique codes within their Geographic area. I presume similar volume testing was carried out as Post Codes were initially introduced.

I'm assuming that some areas must, with urban expansion, now be running short of codes to allocate though. Presumably with net based comms that relative volumes must be shrinking, I'd assume large organisations are now receiving relatively much less conventional mail that smaller ones are.

Surely post code rota chat should be in a dedicated thread?

Seems like a good idea. Not sure what rotas have got to do with it though?

There is one old man who had, until recently, circumvented all previously known rules on postcodes.


Father Christmas's postcode was previously SAN TA1 - a year or two ago, it was changed to XM4 5HQ. Perhaps he felt a bit out of date having a non-standard postcode like the National Girobank did, until 2003 (GIR 0AA).

Slightly off-topic but in Canada, Santa has the Postal Code H0H 0H0 (the standard format of a Canadian Postal Code being N#N #N#.

Or indeed the former sorting office - The Mailbox is B1 1AA