Simply Postcode FAQ  FAQ:Royal Mail PAF daily data updates


The Royal Mail make hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of address changes every day to the 29+ million addresses in the   PAF (Postcode Address File) database.  The PAF file is continually updated from council property applications, and the feedback from 70 thousand postmen, and women, on their beat every morning.

Our servers automatically download the PAF file updates every night from the Royal Mail.  Thus our Postcode Software customers have the latest PAF file data available to them every day.  The PAF file is the most complete and up to date address database in the UK.  It is also recognised as a world class address dataset.

This means that you the customer do not have to apply periodic data updates or worry about the management of such royal mail updates, as we do that for you.   Read some of our customer comments




How we update our address data daily


The following diagram shows how the updates are passed from the feedback received by 70 thousand Royal  postmen, and women, on their beat every morning. These changes are released every day to Royal Mail resellers, such as ourselves. We then apply the changes every night to our copy of the PAF (Postcode Address File) database.

Royal Mail PAF file daily updates

Thus our postcode address software, used on our customers web sites and applications, always returns the very latest PAF file information.

The above scenario applies to 98% of our customers who use the PAF data on our data server.

Some customers take a local data solution, which is a downloadable PAF File.   We release updates to this version of the PAF File monthly via e-mail notifications.