Town and Postcode Search Case Study

The Business Problem

The earlier maps could only search by the names of official areas, such as districts and wards. A user looking for a town had to know which council it fell under, and many well-known towns didn't appear at all because they aren't official areas in their own right.

Towns also don't line up with ward boundaries. A town usually spans several wards, and drawing its official outline on the map cut straight through them.

The Solution

wildesoft.net built a town search from the official ONS gazetteer of place names, adding the built-up areas that it doesn't list as localities, and the Northern Ireland settlements it doesn't cover. Welsh and Gaelic names work too. Over 58,000 towns and villages can be found, with the biggest listed first, so typing "Brom" offers Bromley before the hamlets.

Typing a postcode district or sector, in any case or spacing, lists the towns in it, using over 1.8 million live postcodes. Where two places share a name, the label adds the county and, if needed, the ward, so every entry is different.

Picking a town lists the country, region, county, district and ward it sits in, with how many smaller areas each one holds, plus an "All wards in" option that draws the town as the wards it covers, outlined along their outer edge.

The Result

Users find their area in a couple of keystrokes, by the town or postcode they already know. The map then shows exactly the wards that make up that town, which is what the deprivation and supplier figures are built on.

See all case studies for Deprivation Lens