Enterprise Project Brings Postcodes into the 21st Century to Help Save Lives

Postcodes were developed for sorting post, not finding properties. That’s the problem being addressed by a unique new social enterprise project, designed to make it easier to find individual houses.

Hashpoint is the intelligent system that helps to locate rural properties. Assigning a single letter – called a Hashpoint – to each registered property, once combined with the postcode, it can be used to accurately pinpoint any property on the system using a mobile device or satnav. The project is the brainchild of a GP and her partner from the Forest of Dean. GPs and other services very often have difficulty finding properties from postcodes alone, the time-saving app can make all the difference.

Tom Andrews from Hashpoint, said, “Many GPs on call will have had trouble finding a property at some point in their careers. But when those GPs are in rural areas, this issue becomes more frequent. Sometimes having serious implications, we decided that something had to be done, so worked for the last year to develop the best way of pinpointing these houses that would work across the board – not just for GPs.”

Hashpoint comes with pre-assigned accounts for all properties in the Forest of Dean which are on the electoral roll. Currently sending out over 7,000 letters containing information and validation codes to all unnumbered residences in the area, the hope is to expand throughout Gloucestershire over the summer.

The validation codes are used by residents to access and control their listing, as well offer an added sense of confidence to emergency and other key services that the location data has been accurately provided by the homeowner. The information is public and can be used by everyone who needs to get access to a property.

Set to be used by emergency services, delivery drivers, taxi firms, tradespeople, and any other professional worker looking for a specific house, the user-managed project aims to redefine the idea of a traditional postcode.

Currently accessible from the mobile website and transferred to satnavs, from next month (June 2017), this life-saving data can be accessed offline via the new mobile app.

To find out more about Hashpoint, visit the website: https://hashpoint.org/