You know I half expected to see this sort of story from here in Australia rather than the UK.

From this story the Royal Mail has moved to prevent a third party service from providing an API with up to date Postcode information sourced directly from the Royal Mail itself. This action has had a domino effect, causing issues with those sites that had come to rely on the third party service.

The service, run by ernestmarples.com has not been shutdown for providing bad data, or anything like that. Rather, it is being shutdown because it has been accused of accessing Royal Mail data without a valid license. As I understand it, the Postcode information is regularly updated and released by the Royal Mail for a fee. Basic information such as what postcode an address is in has been deemed to be a commercial resource and is covered by restrictive licensing requirements and fees.

Sigh, post code information is a perfect example of Public Information held by a Government body (the Royal Mail is a corporation run by the British Government) that needs to be freed up. By making the information freely available, costs can be reduced for organisations across the UK, as well as for the Royal Mail itself (in terms of a reduction in the amount of mis-addressed mail and so on).