I'm planning a site which will need to have the ability to search for an address using partial details, like street name. Addresses are integral to the whole working of the app.
Does anyone have any suggestions how I can manage this, given how the Royal Mail is wholly owned by the UK government but the information is not public domain?
The idea will need to be scrapped if I can't get this information.
Thanks, Paul
UPDATE:
I'm not interested in getting into a debate about whether I will make money or how anyone would know that. My question is not about whether the data should be freely available to everyone, which I think it should be given we are tax payers, the government answers to us, and the government owns the private company that owns the mail service.
This question has definitely run its course, but thanks for all the comments... :)
The problem is PAF (the postoffice address finder) is pretty much the only real answer as postcodes change more than we like to talk about. Your company would have to face the cost of paying for it. Having done a lot of work with postcodes in the past, I am not aware of a system that lets you have this information free.. I believe even if you tried to reverse engineer it from data lists (eg electoral roll etc) you have to pay for a full DB.