Data sources & licences
What Place Checker uses, and what its licences permit.
This is the canonical ledger for data that appears in public Place Checker output. Each dataset name links to the publisher’s landing page and each licence links to its authoritative terms. The table deliberately excludes data that may be held privately but is not used by the public application. Possession in storage is never treated as publication permission.
| Dataset | Licence | Commercial use | Derivatives |
|---|---|---|---|
| Estimates of Station Usage Office of Rail and RoadStation usage estimates and historical demand context2024–25 with historical series from 1997–98 · Rail station and region (Great Britain) | Open Government Licence v3.0 | YesYes, with attribution | YesYes, with attribution |
| Solar photovoltaics deployment Department for Energy Security and Net ZeroNational solar photovoltaic deployment trendJuly 2026 · United Kingdom aggregate | Open Government Licence v3.0 | YesYes, with attribution | YesYes, with attribution |
| Census 2021 bulk tables (TS001–TS067) Office for National Statistics, via NomisNeighbourhood and local-authority profiles, including peer similarityCensus 2021 · Middle layer Super Output Area and local authority | Open Government Licence v3.0 | YesYes, with attribution | YesYes, with attribution |
| Price Paid Data (standard, Category A sales) HM Land RegistrySold prices and price trends on area briefs and postcode searches2021–2025 annual files · Local authority district and postcode district | Open Government Licence v3.0 | YesYes, with attribution | YesYes, with attribution |
| MSOA Names House of Commons LibraryReadable names for Census neighbourhoods2021 boundaries · Middle layer Super Output Area | Open Parliament Licence v3.0 | YesYes, with Parliamentary attribution | YesYes, with Parliamentary attribution |
| Monthly management information — school inspection outcomes OfstedSchool inspection recordsLatest inspections as at 30 June 2026 · School (England) | Open Government Licence v3.0 | YesYes, with attribution | YesYes, with attribution |
| CQC care directory Care Quality CommissionRegistered care services and providersDirectory produced 12 August 2026 · Registered location (England) | Open Government Licence v3.0 | YesYes, with attribution | YesYes, with attribution |
| Planning Data for England (conservation areas, listed buildings, Article 4 areas, tree preservation zones) Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local GovernmentPlanning designations on local-authority reportsLive Planning Data platform, aggregated 24 August 2026 · Local planning authority (England) | Open Government Licence v3.0 | YesYes, with attribution | YesYes, with attribution |
| Road Safety Data — collision, casualty and vehicle files Department for TransportReported road collisions and casualties2024 final (2025 provisional also held) · Local authority | Open Government Licence v3.0 | YesYes, with attribution | YesYes, with attribution |
| Road traffic count points and annual average daily flows Department for TransportRoad traffic volumeCount points and AADF bulk downloads · Count point, summarised to local authority | Open Government Licence v3.0 | YesYes, with attribution | YesYes, with attribution |
| National Public Transport Access Nodes Department for Transport (NaPTAN)Public transport access around a searched postcodeExtract of 25 July 2026 · Access node, counted within an approximate 10 km box | Open Government Licence v3.0 | YesYes, with attribution | YesYes, with attribution |
| Public register of charities, areas of operation and classifications Charity Commission for England and WalesRegistered charity countsExtract of 25 July 2026 · Postcode district | Open Government Licence v3.0 | YesYes, with attribution | YesYes, with attribution |
| Great Britain postcode lookup Postcodes.io, using OS OpenData and national statistics dataResolving a Great Britain postcode to official geographyCalled live at request time · Postcode (England, Scotland and Wales) | Open Government Licence v3.0 | YesYes for Great Britain, with attribution | YesYes for Great Britain, with attribution |
| OpenStreetMap data via Nominatim search OpenStreetMap Foundation (Nominatim)Resolving a place name to coordinates when the primary lookup has no matchCalled live at request time · Place | Open Data Commons ODbL 1.0 | YesYes, with OpenStreetMap attribution | YesYes; share-alike applies to a public derivative database |
Rights gate
Every public row must permit commercial use and derivatives.
The Open Government Licence permits copying, publishing, adapting and commercial or non-commercial reuse, provided its attribution and other conditions are followed. The Open Parliament Licence grants equivalent permissions for the MSOA names and requires Parliamentary attribution. OpenStreetMap data permits commercial use and adaptation under the ODbL; attribution is required and a publicly distributed derivative database must follow its share-alike terms.
Place Checker publishes source-derived facts and summaries, not a downloadable replacement for any source dataset. No publisher named here has reviewed or endorsed this site.
Licence boundary
Northern Ireland postcode output is withheld.
Postcodes.io’s current licence page allows Great Britain postcode data under OS OpenData terms, but says commercial use of Northern Ireland postcode data requires a separate licence from Land & Property Services. Place Checker has no recorded commercial permission for that data, so BT postcodes and Northern Ireland place results are not returned. This is a publication-rights boundary, not a claim that no local evidence exists.
Great Britain postcode attribution: Contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right 2025; contains Royal Mail data © Royal Mail copyright and database right 2025; contains National Statistics data © Crown copyright and database right 2025. The year follows the current Postcodes.io notice.
Attribution
Source notices travel with the evidence.
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0 . Census 2021 estimates are Crown copyright, sourced from the Office for National Statistics through Nomis at Durham University. MSOA names contain Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0 . Place-name fallback output contains OpenStreetMap data, © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the ODbL 1.0 .
Publication rule
One predicate governs the page, the directory and the sitemap.
A record is published only when it can be checked against its source. A school needs an Ofsted identifier (URN), a name, a postcode, a recorded outcome and a link to the published report. A care location needs a CQC location identifier, a name, a postcode, at least one registered service type and a link to its CQC page. An area brief needs an official area code and name, Census population evidence and at least three of the four joined evidence layers. The same predicate decides whether a record appears in a directory, whether its page resolves and whether its address is in the sitemap.
Addresses are built from the official identifier plus a slug derived from the current source name. A record whose name changes in the source therefore moves to a new address instead of remaining at a stale one.
Geography
A postcode is a route to evidence, not the level of the evidence.
A permitted search resolves a Great Britain postcode to its ward, LSOA, MSOA and local authority, and each figure is shown at the level its source publishes. Census measures describe a whole council area rather than a street. Reported collisions are local-authority totals for the stated year. Transport nodes are counted inside an approximate 10 km latitude and longitude box, not by travel time. Charity records are matched on postcode district. Ofsted and CQC retain their own local-authority attribution, which may differ from the council that collects bills at the address.
Known limits
What these records cannot tell you.
Ofsted has inspected under several frameworks, so graded judgements, ungraded “remains” results and monitoring outcomes are not mapped onto one scale. Some held school records have no published inspection outcome, and those pages say so. The CQC directory does not include the quality rating, and some registered locations have no latest-check date; a missing date is a gap in the register, not a finding about the service. Provisional road-collision years are labelled provisional because they are revised. Census 2021 is a point in time. Nothing here is a live status check.
Refresh
Dates travel with the record.
Each dataset is reloaded on its publisher’s cadence. Every record stores the release it came from and when it was loaded, and that release is shown on the record. Sitemap dates are the real load dates of the underlying data, not the date the sitemap was requested. Corrections reach this site only through the source: see About for how that works.