How to best attribute house names, numbers and streets to "courts"?

Communities United Kingdom
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Hi all,

I recently joined the mapper community and have been surveying mostly in south Manchester (mainly StreetComplete stuff, but some direct OSM work as well). As I am not originally from the UK I lack some common knowledge around UK addresses, so would appreciate any input.

My question is around “Courts” (as in flat complexes), specifically what the best practice is for house names, street associations and house numbers. I have some examples at the bottom I need help with, but there are some general questions:

  1. Is a “court” associated with it’s closest street or is the court the street? Meaning, if you send a letter to a “court” address, would you write “Flat 1 Example Court, Manchester, MXX XXX” or “Flat 1 Example Court, Some Street, Manchester, MXX XXX”?
  2. Is the “court” the building name? It feels right to give the building in a one building “court” the name of the court, but what if the “court” has more than one building?
  3. Do “courts” have house numbers? Generally speaking, I always only come across flat numbers at court addresses. I am ok with leaving the house number blank, but sometimes there are separate entrances for different flats. How would I best include this information?

Example 1 (one building):
here (Portland Court) the court is only one house. I would give the building the court name. What do I put for street (and house number)?

Example 2 (multiple buildings and roads):
here (Ballbrook Court) the court consists of multiple buildings, with many flats and a somewhat complex service road system. Do I name all houses after the court? What would I put for street name

Example 3 (multiple buildings, odd flat numbers)
here (Pine Court) it seems that the flats follow the house number system of the adjacent streets, so I would just label them with street name and house number, but it’s a bit odd that every flat is a different house number.

I appreciate any help here.

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A typical series of tags would be:

addr:flats for the numbers of each flat

addr:housename for the name (such as Example Court)

addr:housenumber when there is a number related to the street (yes, Pine Court is unusual and you did it OK; I have encountered something similar)

addr:street for the street

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Thank you!
So just to clarify: Whatever the court name is, I would only put this as the house name and then the next named street as addr:street, correct?

In the Ballbrook Court example, I would give all the buildings the name Ballbrook Court but set Wilmslow Road as addr:street?

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See Addresses in the United Kingdom - OpenStreetMap Wiki

If Ballbrook Court is more than one building and it’s a street name (there’s a nearby highway= with name=Ballbrook Court) then it can just go into addr:street=. If it’s not a street name, then I would use addr:place, though some use addr:substreet. Then use addr:parentstreet for the street it’s on, if it’s part of the address (it isn’t always).

In the area you’ve linked to there’s a Ballbrook Court and a Ballbrooke Court, is one of them a typo?

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For the benefit of OP there was also some recent discussion about that wiki page here.

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Thank you very much. Was indeed a typo!