OS Open Names

What it contains

Gazetteer of GB place names, road numbers and postcodes with coordinates and hierarchy.

When you need it

Useful at these project stages, from the working group's stage matrix:

Strategic Definition

Matched on

Ordnance Survey and topographical surveys

Assigned by

Matched to data items the matrix names

Coverage and detail

Geographic

Great Britain (England, Scotland, Wales). NOT Northern Ireland - OSNI is a separate agency.

Nations

England, Scotland, Wales

Resolution

Point gazetteer

Formats

Varies by product: CSV, GML, GeoPackage, Shapefile, vector tiles, raster (GeoTIFF)

Update cadence

OS OpenData refresh roughly quarterly; OS Open UPRN and Open USRN every six weeks

Access and machine route

Licence as stated

Open Government Licence v3.0 with the OS OpenData attribution requirement: 'Contains OS data (c) Crown copyright and database right [year]'

Assertion source

as published by Ordnance Survey

Protocol

OS Downloads API v1 (REST/JSON, lists product versions and direct download URLs); OS Maps API / OS Vector Tile API for tiled access

Endpoint

https://api.os.uk/downloads/v1/products

Harvest note

yes-automated note recorded in the machine_endpoint field: OS Downloads API open products need no key also

Caveats

GB only - Northern Ireland requires OSNI/LPS products via Spatial NI. OS OpenMap Local buildings carry no height or attribute data. Terrain 50 is too coarse for site-level design (use LIDAR).

Classification

Category

Infrastructure & Networks

Sub-category

3.6 Sites, land & development opportunity

Assigned by

Stated by the source

Depth domain

Surface

Technology

Open-loop / ATES

Data form

Raster, Tabular, Vector

Evidence confidence

Not yet assessed. Only a person can set this.

How current this entry is

Last updated here

2026-09-22

Last checked against the holder

2026-09-07

Checked by a person

Not yet. Nobody has read this entry.

Catalogue id

os-open-names