Skip to main content
All CollectionsTechnical
Do you provide county/province names?
Do you provide county/province names?

Royal Mail have stopped supporting counties and they are no longer required as part of a postal address

Updated over 2 years ago

Yes, our API does return province and UK county names where available.

In UK, since the postcodes were fully implemented, the Royal Mail have stopped supporting counties and they are no longer required as part of a postal address. There is no central authority in the UK to define a single set of counties and their boundaries. There are at least three different sets of county names in circulation :

  • Former Postal - as used by Royal Mail in the past for mail delivery purposes

  • Traditional - the "real" county names going back in history

  • Administrative - this includes unitary authorities

More information about the confusion around county names in the UK can be found on Wikipedia.

The county name is not needed as part of an address in the UK for postal needs and Royal Mail sorting machines would ignore it anyway. However, our system does provide a choice of traditional and former postal county names for customers who do require this data.

Did this answer your question?