About the IPN
The IPN is a gazetteer linking over 70,000 named places in England and Wales to their respective administrative, health and electoral areas.
It also relates places to registration districts, built-up areas and national parks.
We provide a 1-metre grid reference, and where the place has legally defined boundaries, a re-aggregated 2011 Census population count, to be updated with Census 2021 counts.
The places we give information for include administrative units (ranging from parishes to regions), localities and urban areas or subdivisions.
From 1 January 2011, a new Government Statistical Service (GSS) Coding and Naming Geography policy was implemented.
Where codes have been allocated, you should use them in all exchanges of statistics and published outputs that normally include codes.
The Code History Database (CHD) provides multi-functionality, including details of all codes, relationships, hierarchies and archived data.
The 2020 IPN contains the nine-character GSS coding for all geographies, except localities, settlements, urban areas and urban subdivisions.
Product details
The IPN is a MS Access 2007 file and user guide.