Getting the city for an address

API Question
#1

Hey,
I was checking out the API and trying a few searches by registration number and noticed that it is not obvious where I can get the city from for the address. For example a London based company I checked had the city (London) in the region field.

"address": {
"premises": "338a",
"address_line_1": "Regents Park Road",
"postal_code": "N3 2LN",
"region": "London",
"locality": "Finchley Central"
},

While another company in a smaller town had the name of the city in the locality field.

 "address": {
"locality": "Warwick",
"address_line_1": "Wathen Road",
"country": "United Kingdom",
"postal_code": "CV34 5BA",
"premises": "27 "
},

Is there a way to know where to fetch the city from in all scenarios?

#2

Not as far as I’m aware - we parse these to try to make the best sense. Rule of thumb is parse everything coming from Companies House and try to avoid assumptions.

A look through some of the bulk data will show you to what extent there is “regularity” - or not.

Companies House get data in “from the public” (directly, via formation agents etc.) and presumably they’ve also migrated their old data or even gone back and digitised what were entirely paper records.

So someone e.g. fills in an IN01(or submits online), puts stuff in the wrong boxes, misspells things - and it becomes the record.

For the most part I believe they are actually legally required to record what they’re told as is. I don’t know exactly what validation or data correction they do but it appears minimal.

Apart from anything else I think the required budget to go and check all the “facts” is vastly greater than what they’re running on! And their records go back far enough that “facts” (countries, places…) have actually changed.

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#3

Companies House Service information states

We carry out basic checks on documents received to make sure that they have been fully completed and signed, but we do not have the statutory power or capability to verify the accuracy of the information that companies send to us. The fact that the information has been placed on the public record should not be taken to indicate that Companies House has verified or validated it in any way.

So by and large what we all get is exactly what the Company supplies for the record, including information in the wrong boxes, misspellings and typos.

Frank Murphy
https://statbooks.co.uk/Companies/

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