Postcode to Broad Rental Market Areas (BRMAs) Lookup v2.2 (2025)

This dataset is a lookup file linking unit postcodes to Broad Rental Market Area (BRMA) boundaries for the UK. BRMAs are the spatial areas used for the administration of Housing Benefit or Local Housing Allowance. There are 200 BRMAs in total.

BRMA boundaries were collected from publicly available datasets. For Great Britain, postcodes were linked to BRMAs using Office for National Statistics (ONS) postcode centroid lookups. For Northern Ireland, the lack of open postcode data required the use of a workaround. Full details on process here: https://github.com/nick-bailey/Postcode-to-BRMA-lookup.

In v2.2, we correct an error from the previous version which meant that West Dunbartonshire BRMA had been omitted with postcodes in that zone wrongly attributed to neighbouring BRMAs.

Cite this as

Urban Big Data Centre (2025). Postcode to Broad Rental Market Areas (BRMAs) Lookup v2.2 (2025) [Data set]. University of Glasgow. https://doi.org/10.20394/mu6lw0x9
Retrieved: 06:01 10 Feb 2025 (UTC)

Additional Info

Title Postcode to Broad Rental Market Areas (BRMAs) Lookup v2.2 (2025)
Alternative title
URL postcode-to-broad-rental-market-areas-brmas-lookup-v2-2-2025
Description

This dataset is a lookup file linking unit postcodes to Broad Rental Market Area (BRMA) boundaries for the UK. BRMAs are the spatial areas used for the administration of Housing Benefit or Local Housing Allowance. There are 200 BRMAs in total.

BRMA boundaries were collected from publicly available datasets. For Great Britain, postcodes were linked to BRMAs using Office for National Statistics (ONS) postcode centroid lookups. For Northern Ireland, the lack of open postcode data required the use of a workaround. Full details on process here: https://github.com/nick-bailey/Postcode-to-BRMA-lookup.

In v2.2, we correct an error from the previous version which meant that West Dunbartonshire BRMA had been omitted with postcodes in that zone wrongly attributed to neighbouring BRMAs.

Content

The dataset contains a list of postcodes (current and historic) and the BRMA (reference number and name) to which they belong as well as the country.

Subjects Housing
Topics
Dataset Citation Urban Big Data Centre. Economic and Social Research Council. Postcode to Broad Rental Market Areas (BRMAs) Lookup,v2.2, 2025 [data collection]. University of Glasgow - Urban Big Data Centre
Time Period Coverage
Geographical Coverage United Kingdom
Spatial Units Broad Rental Market Area, Postcode
Observation Units
Resource Type Dataset
Data Format Structured data
Weighting
Method of Collection

Online open access sources (UK Government)

Collection Status
Dataset Aggregation
Data Owner Urban Big Data Centre
Data Owner Url https://ubdc.ac.uk/
License uk-ogl
Licence Specifics
Provider b2ba2219-ff6c-461a-a746-e762ef7600fd
Version 2.2
Dataset Available 2025-01-17
Dataset Closed
Dataset Valid
Dataset Updating Frequency
Dataset Next Version Due
Date Published 2025-01-17
Date of Fieldwork
Dataset File Type
Dataset File Size 16,344 KB
Dataset Creation Date
Dataset Access Restrictions
Metadata Created Date
Metadata Created Institution
Dataset Fields (6)
Field Name:
country
Description:

1-character (E - England; N - Northern Ireland; S - Scotland; W - Wales)

Type:
String
Field Name:
PCD
Description:

7-character postcodes (may have one space or none)

Type:
String
Field Name:
PCD2
Description:

8-character postcodes (may have one space or two)

Type:
String
Field Name:
PCDS
Description:

7- or 8-character postcodes (always has one space)

Type:
String
Field Name:
brma
Description:

The reference number, taken from the BRMA boundary. NB that NI BRMAs numbered 201-208 to avoid overlap with England.

Type:
String
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