BLOG - Unlocking the Power of Place: why you should consider using UPRN in public good research

What is a UPRN?

Every addressable location in Great Britain - homes, schools, hospitals, shops, empty plots, even street furniture - has a unique 12-digit reference number assigned to it. Think of a UPRN as the National Insurance number of places: permanent, precise, universally recognisable and machine-readable.

Instead of relying on sometimes messy address strings, postcode changes or subjective descriptions, the UPRN acts as a stable anchor for linking datasets. This single identifier can unify complex information on:

• housing
• health
• education
• demographics
• infrastructure
• environmental factors
• service use

And that’s where research gets exciting.

There are multiple strengths to using UPRN within your administrative data research

1. They’re becoming standard across public services.

Government and local authorities increasingly embed UPRNs in their systems. For researchers, this makes learning to use them a future-proof skill that keeps your methods aligned with emerging data standards.

2. They make data linkage easier (and more accurate).

Addresses aren’t always written the same way across datasets. UPRNs solve this. They give you a reliable key to connect administrative data, survey responses, and operational records. This makes them perfect for multidisciplinary work and long-term analysis, significantly reducing the errors of data matching compared to address strings alone.

3. They help reveal patterns you can’t see from postcodes alone. 

A postcode can cover dozens of households. A UPRN pinpoints one specific property. That extra precision lets researchers examine:

• inequalities within neighbourhoods
• the impact of housing conditions
• infrastructure needs
• environment health relationships
• service accessibility at the household level. 

The more granular the lens, the more nuanced your findings can be. A UPRN enables a ‘golden thread’ of information - supporting the tracking of a location throughout its life-cycle. This is essential for longitudinal studies on housing, planning and safety.

4. They allow data to be grouped into households

Researchers often need to understand the impact of who is living together in households. For example, is someone living with a person who needs care and how does this impact their ability to be in employment or the hours they may be able to work.

UPRNs are therefore applicable to a large range of research areas and can be used to answer any number of evidential gaps. For example:

• Energy Efficiency and Inequality- what is the impact of poorly heated housing on a person’s physical and mental health? How does energy consumption and cost affect household inequalities across Scotland?
• Health and Social Care- do environmental factors (air quality, green space, housing conditions) impact social determinants on population health inequalities?
• Urban Studies and Planning- what is the impact of climate change (e.g. flood risk modelling) in regards to physical property and infrastructure planning in high population areas?

What are we doing on UPRN in ADR Scotland?

We were recently pleased to announce a new investment from UKRI into ADR Scotland of £25 million to run the overarching programme until 2031. As part of this programme, we will be delving further into our geospatial data ambitions and developing previous creations such as the CHI-UPRN Residential Linkage (CURL) tool, (see previous blogs and our detailed guide). 

ADR Scotland has designed a system that allows the use of UPRN’s within the Scottish National Safe Haven that reduces the risk of re-identification.

Currently, we have made one dataset available that is UPRN based , titled the Annual electricity and gas consumption at the property level, Scotland. We are also experimenting with another dataset that provides the road and walking distance from every residential UPRN to the nearest GP surgery. The ‘distance to’ paradigm can be used for the distance to any point of interest (POI) providing it has a UPRN. Further, we are exploring ways to link environmental measurements by mapping each residential UPRN to centroid of square km for every year of data and every parameter (pollutants, weather variables, etc.) from open sources of environmental data.

How You Can Access UPRNs

If you’re working with administrative or linked datasets, you may already be able to request UPRNs as part of your approved data access. (If you’re not sure, we can help you find out.)

UPRNs are also available under open government licence for many public datasets, meaning you can start exploring what’s possible right now.

Please get in touch with us to find out more on how to unlock the potential of place.