A reader found a bug. It led to four more.

A reader told me their own postcode came back with the wrong region and local authority. They were right. Auditing why turned up four further problems, and all five are now fixed and covered by tests.

Parish names are not unique in England. The same name can be a rural parish in one county and an urban district in another — Elmbridge, for example, is a borough in Surrey and a civil parish in Worcestershire. Matches were made on the name alone. Every match is now verified against the county, district and region of the point you searched.

Some parishes were listed as designated when the legislation names them as the opposite. Where the Order describes an area by its boundary — "…bounded by the parishes of…", "…excluding the parishes of…" — those neighbouring parishes were being read as designations rather than as the edge of one.

Some were told the whole parish was designated when only part of it is, which removed the prompt to check the official map. Where the legislation lists the same name twice and disagrees, you now get the "check the map" answer.

And some designated parishes were being told the opposite — the Order writes Bishops Frome and Newby & Scalby where the official boundary data writes Bishop's Frome and Newby and Scalby, and an apostrophe was enough to break the match. 37 parishes were affected.

Certainty levels are also more honest: a result that couldn't be verified geographically, or came from an inexact postcode, no longer reads as definitive.

Please keep it coming. If a result looks wrong to you, say so — you know your own patch better than any dataset does. There's a feedback box at the bottom of this page, and it comes straight to me.

Indicative guidance only — not legal advice. Results are matched at civil-parish level against the Housing (Right to Enfranchise) (Designated Protected Areas) (England) Order 2009. For “by maps” parishes the precise boundary is defined by the official map — always confirm against it and take professional advice before relying on a result.

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