AreaIQ Places

Understand how a place works.

Search any UK postcode, town or council to see the authorities, boundaries and local data that apply there.

Official-source linked. Built from public geographic and administrative data.

The UK map

Every council, on one map

361 council boundaries from the Office for National Statistics. Tap a council to see who runs it and the nearest postcode sector. Switch on postcode sectors or the service layers to see what is recorded where.

Loads on its own when it scrolls into view

Boundaries: ONS Open Geography Portal, ultra-generalised, Open Government Licence v3. Service points: National Chargepoint Registry, DfE and OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL). Map tiles by CARTO and OpenStreetMap contributors. Wards, constituencies, population, housing, deprivation and planning layers are planned and will appear here only when real data is wired to them.

The signature answer

Who runs this place?

UK local government is layered. A single street can be run by a district council for planning and bins, a county council for roads and schools, a police force, a fire authority and an NHS body, each with a different boundary. Every postcode page lays that out as a hierarchy, with the share of the sector each body actually covers.

2,265 of the 11,235 postcode sectors straddle more than one council, and 8,686 straddle more than one ward. We say so rather than pick one.

See SG4 9 in Hitchin →

Example: SG4 9, Hitchin, North Hertfordshire
County council
  • Schools and education
  • Adult social care
  • Children’s services
  • Roads and highways
District council
  • Planning applications
  • Bin and recycling collection
  • Council tax and business rates collection
  • Housing and homelessness
Hertfordshire
Fire and rescue authority
  • Fire and rescue
Hertfordshire
Police force
  • Policing
Council explorer

Explore councils

All 382 UK local authorities: what each is responsible for, whether it decides planning applications, its wards, constituencies, towns and postcode sectors, and its official website.

Postcode data

Explore postcode data

11,235 postcode sector pages covering 1,809,062 live postcodes. Each carries the official and open data below, with its source, licence and refresh date on the page, and "Not available" where a figure does not exist rather than a guess.

Housing
Median and average sale prices, sales counts, change over time, by property type
8,143 sectors · HM Land Registry Price Paid Data
Broadband
Share of premises able to order gigabit, superfast and full fibre
9,619 sectors · Ofcom Connected Nations, Spring 2026
Transport
Rail, tube, tram and ferry stops within 2 km, bus stops within 800 m
10,634 sectors · NaPTAN, Department for Transport
Energy efficiency
Energy Performance Certificates by band
8,189 sectors · Energy Performance of Buildings register (MHCLG)
Schools
State schools by address, with a link to each inspection report
7,386 sectors · DfE Get Information About Schools
GP and dental practices
Practices recorded with an address in the sector
4,098 sectors · OpenStreetMap contributors
EV charging
Public charge points and connectors
3,383 sectors · National Chargepoint Registry
Solar potential
Modelled irradiation and output for the sector centroid
11,034 sectors · PVGIS, European Commission Joint Research Centre

Browse by town →

Source transparency

Where every fact comes from

Every module on every page names its source and links to the original. This is the full list.

SourceWhat we take from itLicenceRefreshed
National Statistics Postcode Lookup (ONS)Which country, region, county, council, ward, constituency, police force and NHS body each live postcode is inOpen Government Licence v35 September 2026
ONS Open Geography PortalNames for every administrative code, the council hierarchy, and council boundariesOpen Government Licence v35 September 2026
WikidataOfficial council websites, filtered to government domainsCC05 September 2026
HM Land Registry Price Paid DataMedian and average sale prices, sales counts, change over 1, 5 and 10 years, by property typeOpen Government Licence v321 June 2026
HM Land Registry Price Paid Data (post towns)The Royal Mail post town recorded against sales in each sectorOpen Government Licence v325 June 2026
DfE Get Information About SchoolsOpen state-funded schools in England by address; no inspection grade is carriedOpen Government Licence v321 June 2026
Ofcom Connected Nations, Spring 2026Share of premises able to order gigabit, superfast and full-fibre servicesOpen Government Licence v324 June 2026
NaPTAN, Department for TransportRail, tube, tram and ferry stop points within 2 km and bus stops within 800 m of the sector centroidOpen Government Licence v323 June 2026
Energy Performance of Buildings register (MHCLG)Distribution of lodged domestic Energy Performance Certificates by bandOpen Government Licence v321 June 2026
PVGIS, European Commission Joint Research CentreModelled solar irradiation and output for the sector centroidEuropean Commission22 June 2026
OpenStreetMap contributorsCounts of GP and dental practices recorded with an address in the sectorODbL5 September 2026
National Chargepoint RegistryPublic charge points and connectors recorded in the sectorOpen Government Licence v35 September 2026
Methodology

How Places works, in five sentences

A postcode sector (SG4 9) is a Royal Mail delivery unit, not an administrative one, so we resolve every one of its live postcodes to the ONS codes for country, region, county, council, ward, constituency, police force and NHS body, and report the share each covers.

Names and the council hierarchy come from the ONS Open Geography Portal, never inferred from which codes happen to share a sector.

What each authority is responsible for comes from a registry of statutory duties by authority type, with London and combined-authority exceptions recorded explicitly.

Local data is joined by sector from the sources above and shown as facts with provenance; nothing is scored, ranked or judged, and a missing value is shown as not available rather than filled with a default.

The same resolver runs in the browser and at build time, so a live search and a static page cannot disagree. Read the full methodology and data notes →