The Scottish Statistics Postcode Lookup (SSPL) supports the production of official statistics in Scotland. It supports the consistent use of statistical geographies across official statistics outputs and the implementation of the Government Statistical Service (GSS) Geography Policy.
The GSS Geography Policy recommends that statistics producers use ‘statistical building blocks’ to produce statistics at higher level geographies. In Scotland these are Census Output Areas, Data Zones, and Intermediate Zones.
The SSPL supports the implementation of the GSS Geography Policy by using Output Areas as a building block. Postcodes are allocated to higher geographies based on the postcode’s OA. All the postcodes in an OA will then be allocated to the same higher geography using a best-fit method.
Using building blocks to create estimates for higher geographies reduces the risk of disclosure of information by differencing. Differencing is the process of subtracting figures for overlapping geographies to reveal information about small populations in the ‘slivers’ that overlap.
The Scottish Statistics Postcode Lookup (SSPL) is a CSV file containing both live and deleted postcodes assigned to a variety of geographical areas in Scotland. Postcodes are allocated to Census Output Areas using the postcode grid reference, these are then allocated to all higher geographies based on the output area centroid. This is known as an output area base.
You can now access the latest 2025/1 Scottish Statistics Postcode Lookup.
