Post town
Encyclopedia : P : PO : POS : Post town
A post town is a required part of all UK postal addresses. Including the correct post town in the address increases the chances of a letter or parcel being delivered on time.
Organisation
There are approximately 1,500 post towns which are organised at the convenience of the Royal Mail. Each post town usually corresponds to one or more postcodes and each post town can cover an area including many individual towns and villages. Post towns rarely correspond to political boundaries and often group places that for all other purposes are quite separate.
Usage
The Royal Mail states that the post town must be included on all items of mail immediately above the postcode and should be printed in capitals.
- 1 Valance Road
- LONDON
- E2 1AA
Dependent locality
In some places in order to give further direction an additional 'dependent locality' is added above the post town giving a more specific location name. In most cases, including in the LONDON post town, this is not a required part of the address. However, if no postcode is used, or if the sorting machine rejects the letter, the use of locality will significantly speed up manual sorting.
- 1 Valance Road
- Bethnal Green
- LONDON
- E2 1AA
VIA
Traditionally, where a place was served by a post town entirely distinct from its location the text 'via' or 'near' was added before the post town. Such as:
- 1 High Street
- Sewardstone
- VIA LONDON
- E4 1AA
See also
- List of postal areas in the United Kingdom — the main postal sorting centres
- List of post towns in the United Kingdom — the post towns grouped by postal areas
- List of postal districts in the United Kingdom — the post town for each district
- Postal counties of the United Kingdom
- UK postcodes
External links
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.