Is addr:place always wrong in UK? Is "Addresses in the United Kingdom" wiki page best documentation of addressing tags in UK?

Communities United Kingdom
1

Quest ask to complete 'Place' (addr:place) in UK when this tag should not be used in UK · Issue #6572 · streetcomplete/StreetComplete · GitHub bug report arrived in SC issue tracker, and I want to ask broader UK community for feedback.

Is Addresses in the United Kingdom - OpenStreetMap Wiki considered as accurate?

Is there a better text on this topic?

If it is accurate - then maybe Key:addr:suburb - OpenStreetMap Wiki should mention UK-specific use, divergent from what is described there?

Is addr:place ever OK in UK?

Does it make sense to ask in UK about missing addr:street/addr:place if neither is present? And add either street name or settlement name if address is not indexed using street?

If not, would it start to make sense if that question would appear only where neither addr:streetnoraddr:placenoraddr:suburb` appears?

Is this SC quest resulting in wonky/wrong data in UK and should be stopped in its current form? Or is bad data ratio acceptably low?

Sorry for multiple, maybe confused, questions - but I am confused and not sure how to act on this reported problem and is it a problem. Talk:Addresses in the United Kingdom - OpenStreetMap Wiki seems to confirm that it is overall confused situation.

I am considering closing that issue as invalid or making commit that would disable this quest in UK or supressing this question if addr:suburb is present.

Disclaimer: I extensively contributed to StreetComplete (maybe including this quest) and I am not a local UK mapper (in fact I never visited UK)

2

I’m the UK mapper who raised this issue so I feel I should comment! I would, however, say that Addresses in the United Kingdom - OpenStreetMap Wiki aligns with how addresses in the UK work, which is not the same as addresses in many/most other countries. UK addresses are generally:

One or more these:

(1)
<unit #> (optional, if it’s an apartment block)
(optional, if there is one)
(optional, there may not be any numbers or even a street name)
(optional, if it’s a block set back from a bigger road)

Followed by:

(2)
(optional, on the ground that is a suburb, district or village but Royal Mail may not define it in the official address)

Followed by:

(3)
<town/city> (required)
(required)

addr:place in OSM is clearly an alternative to addr:street in OSM based on StreetComplete behaviour. These are both parts of section (1) above.

You can have several forms of the pieces in (1) which all have the same data for (2) and (3) so addr:place is not interchangeable with addr:suburb (as it says on the addr:place wiki page).

You can have a housename with nothing else in part 1 of the address, in which case there is no addr:place. There are many places where some streets are unnamed but some a and in all cases, the address will include the suburb/village/district but may well not include the streetname e.g. in my village we have:

Three Wood (housename)
Casterton (village/suburb)
Carnforth (posttown/city)
LA6 (postcode)

Three Wood is a house on Gateheads Lane (its streetname) but Royal Mail do not use it in the address.

We also have:

3 Fern Croft (# and street)
Casterton (village/suburb)
Carnforth (post-town/city)
LA6 (postcode)

‘Casterton’ is a constant and needs to use the same tag whatever is above it ij the address. This is why I flagged the issue with addr:place.

Hope that makes sense.

3

As I understand it, the situation for which addr:place was defined (namely where there is no street name to attach a housename/number to) can and does occur in the UK. There are some small villages/hamlets where the houses don’t have a street name, and the address goes straight from the housename/number to the village/hamlet name.

Given that this is precisely the situation addr:place was defined for, I don’t see why we would want to create an exception and not use it in the UK. Using it also has the advantage of allowing a useful QC check, than anything with an address has at least one of addr:housename or addr:hosuenumber, and exactly one of addr:street or addr:place. Otherwise you can’t tell if an address without an addr:street doesn’t have one at all or has one that just hasn’t been tagged.

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4

I spent considerable time writing this page following extensive discussion with the UK community. It represents the best consensus we got at the time.

Ultimately UK addresses don’t follow OSM norms that well. See page 12 of the PAF programmers guide. We can have thoroughfare and dependent thoroughfare (street, substreet and parent street in OSM tagging - we couldn’t agree). We can also have locality and dependent locality (suburb and one of hamlet/village/town - again we couldn’t agree).

addr:place is not recommended for use in the UK for the reasons given on the wiki page - i.e. it’s use was an absolute mess as a clean up effort only scraped the surface.

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5

The “Tags to envelope” section of that wiki page shows you how best to interpret addr:place of you come across it in an OSM address. But best not to add any more of these tags :pensive_face:

6

For the reasons that were set out in that wiki page. The tag is a mess and a clean up attempt failed to make enough improvement. If you use the tag then end users won’t be able to distinguish your proper use from other people’s incorrect use.

7

Unfortunately there seem to be quite a few examples of UK addresses with both addr:street and addr:place.

To lazily quote myself on the talk page:

(Missing word added.)

I assume this is the situation that needs cleaning up per @RobJN’s posts?

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8

Examples of addr:place=* being used:

If these are all incorrect uses of addr:place then I think I’m following along (and I can fix these locally at least).

What is a good example in the UK of an address without an addr:street, for which an addr:place should be used instead?

9

Answering my own question :smiley: seems like a good use?

10

I don’t follow the logic. Data users will have no issue working with the proper use of the tag. Why would that change because some other node somewhere else is tagged wrongly?

I understand that the UK needs the addr:substreet/addr:parentstreet exception (why it needs two tags instead of just one is questionable but somewhat possible to work around). But apart from that, there is absolutely nothing special about addresses in the UK. You should just use addr:street vs addr:place as anybody else.

Example, where addr:place should be used: Way: ‪Talmage House‬ (‪273258931‬) | OpenStreetMap (Address: 55 Fosbury, Marlborough. There is no street named ‘Fosbury’.)

11

I’m not familiar with the place, but the tags on Way 262101927:

name = Hawkstone Park Hotel
addr:city = Shrewsbury
addr:country = GB
addr:place = Weston Under Redcastle
addr:postcode = SY4 5UY

seem to be broadly match what they have on their (untagged) website:

Hawkstone Park, Weston-under-Redcastle, Shrewsbury, Shropshire, SY4 5UY

(courtesy of overpass turbo)

12

This seems to be a mistake (“Weston Under Redcastle” would be an addr:suburb), or at least I think so based on what I’m reading from the wiki.

Actually my mummy told me our addresses are very special.

This seems to be another good example (and surprising to me since that’s a very long road which connects to lots of smaller roads - with names!).

13

In that case I find that line in the table a little dubious.

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So I can understand the logic, since addr:place and addr:street aren’t allowed to exist on the same object. This isn’t something that’s been made up for the UK.

Looking up the street from Fosbury, Oxenwood has a few houses. Here’s two:

  • SMAYDOWN COTTAGE, SMAYDOWN LANE, OXENWOOD, MARLBOROUGH, WILTS, SN8 3NH
  • 8, OXENWOOD, MARLBOROUGH, WILTS, SN8 3NQ

If the first one starts with addr:housename,addr:street,addr:suburb but the second one starts with addr:housenumber, addr:place - that’s weird, isn’t it. So unless you mark the second up as addr:housenumber, addr:suburb you would have to search for both addr:place and addr:suburb when trying to get a list of all houses in Oxenwood, as one example of how it’s weird.

(I don’t know how much that matters and I don’t have a strong opinion on this topic, but I grok the logic of why addr:suburb would be preferred here)

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15

I get the logic, but “suburb” is a word with a pre-existing meaning. “Substreet” is essentially made up for OSM and can have whatever definition we want it to.

I’m actually fine with “postal town” being pushed to addr:city (that’s mostly a question of scale), but it seems absurd to call something a suburb when it’s separated from the main urban area by 7 miles of farmland. Especially when the main town isn’t even that wide.

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16

If we want to continue that clean up, here are some big offenders:

select street, place, count(*) from osm_addrs where street is not null and place is not null group by 1,2 order by 3 desc;

street place count
Ostend Gap Coastline Village 89
Stonehaven Road Marywell Park Homes 64
The Lakes Primrose Valley Holiday Park 62
Redlawood Road Newton 54
Sycamore Avenue Primrose Valley Holiday Park 53
Pitt Farm Park Spy Post 51
Birch Court Primrose Valley Holiday Park 44
Maybrook Road Maybrook Business Park 42
Mytchett Heath Mytchett 42
Courtlands Teston 40
Carrington Terrace Kiveton Park 40
Valley Lodge Honicombe Park, Callington 39
Radford Road Tinsley Green 38
Clementine Drive Chartwell Grange 38
The Ropewalk The Ropewalk Industrial Centre 37
Knightcott Industrial Estate Knightcott Industrial Estate 35
London Road North End 34
Rawlins Park Avebury 33
Dolgwili Road Glangwili General Hospital 33
St. Peter’s Avenue Caversham Heights 33
South Drive Sandhill Park 32
Glossop Road Little Hayfield 32
Monument View Chelston Business Park 32
Aintree Road Keytec 7 Business Park 31
Lawns Road Yate 31
Phelipps Road Corfe Mullen 30
High Hazles Road Manvers Business Park 29
Stonehills Fawley 29
Shearwater Primrose Valley Holiday Park 29
Shurton Road Shurton 28
Cledwen Road Broughton 27
Puffin Primrose Valley Holiday Park 27
Tottenham Lane Cranford Way Industrial Estate 27
Cowfold Road The Old Sussex Stud 26
Burnside Flotta 26
Razorbill Primrose Valley Holiday Park 26
Weacombe Road West Quantoxhead 25
Hills Road Birches Industrial Estata 25
Etchingwood Lane Etchingwood 24
Ball Lane Coven Heath 24
St Ninians Way Blackness 24
Leopold Street Harrington Mills 24
Broughton Park Shoreditch 23
Greenhill Road Alveston 23
Bridge Mill Court Cowling 23
Cormorant Primrose Valley Holiday Park 22

select place, count(*) from osm_addrs where street is not null and place is not null group by 1 order by 2 desc;

place count
Primrose Valley Holiday Park 382
Coastline Village 89
Manners Industrial Estate 87
Chelston Business Park 73
Marywell Park Homes 64
Flotta 55
Newton 55
Spy Post 53
Swanmore 53
Keytec 7 Business Park 53
Shurton 52
Blackness 50
North End 47
Teston 46
Westgate Centre 45
Stolford 45
Mytchett 42
Maybrook Business Park 42
Little Hayfield 41
West Wick 41
Yate 41
Queens Drive Industrial Estate 40
Kiveton Park 40
Honicombe Park, Callington 39
Tinsley Green 39
Strood 39
Merridge 38
Chartwell Grange 38
Crown Industrial Estate 37
The Ropewalk Industrial Centre 37
Avebury 37
Sabden 37
Broadgate Park 36
Ellisfield 36
Grove 35
Knightcott Industrial Estate 35
Bailgate 34
Spaxton 34
Glangwili General Hospital 33
Dunwear 33
Great Wyrley 33
Willow Farm Business Park 33
Caversham Heights 33
Birches Industrial Estata 33
Fawley 33
Blackrod 33

(Updated to data from 2025-10-23T20:20:52Z)

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17

A properly used tag is fine. It’s the improperly used ones that are problematic hence why the page offers suggestions how to deal with them in the “tags to envelope” section.

My point was that you can get away without using addr:place in GB. Why? Because as per our addressing system you can get an address that has a street (“thoroughfare” in the official terminology) AND a “locality” AND a “dependent locality” AND finally a postal town. Therefore we need two tags for the “locality” AND a “dependent locality” elements which are not addr:place as that is not allowed when “addr:street” is used. Once you have these two tags then you can use them instead in cases where the “addr:street” element is not required. Alternatively you end up with quite complicated logic that says: use “this and that” for “locality” AND a “dependent locality” when a street is in the address, but when a street is not in the address use “addr:place and that” instead.

As noted, no consensus was agreed, so the wiki page lays it out as best we could. It’s then up to the mapper to make a decision how to tag something and data users to decide how they want to interpret the tags.

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18

There is really nothing special in here. Many countries have multiple levels of locations between the street and the postal towns. People cope with variations of addr:quarter, addr:suburb, addr:hamlet etc. Which one exactly you choose it not that important. It’s fairly easy to process in a general way as long as the suffixes somewhat follow the semi-established hierarchy of place values.

The only thing that is special about UK addresses is that a street name may appear in that hierarchy. I am indeed not aware of any other country doing that. So inventing a country-specific addr:parentstreet makes perfect sense.

It’s addr:substreet that is the unnecessary one. If you were to get rid of addr:substreet and use addr:place in its stead, the UK’d be immediately 100% compatible with the global standards. There is also no big danger that the currently misused addr:place are confused with proper tagging because the schema as defined still sticks to the rule that addr:street and addr:place must not appear together. When addr:place is erroneously used as a stand-in for addr:locality, it will appear with an addr:street tag. So it is fairly easy to detect the issue and handle it.

That said, it is also fairly trivial to interpret addr:substreet in the same way as addr:place on the processing side. It’s really more a question of every single data user (and OSM editor and mapper in the UK) having to be aware of the exception. That can be tricky.

2 Likes
19

Huh?

If you get rid of addr:substreet and replace it with addr:place then you will end up with legitimate situations where addr:place and addr:street are on the same location with no way of telling if this addr:place is was actually meant to be an addr:locality.

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20

I think @lonvia is saying that you should use add:place and addr:parentstreet in this case.

Regardless, this is now just becoming a replay of the discussion we had several years ago, to which there was no concensus and, as such, I wrote the wiki page to best reflect this and allow matters to make their own decision how best to tag addresses. Relevant to the original question, this allows for all GB addresses without addr:place being required however it doesn’t forbid its use.