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	<title>VoteUK &#8211; Some Progress! &#8211; Terence Eden’s Blog</title>
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	<title>VoteUK &#8211; Some Progress! &#8211; Terence Eden’s Blog</title>
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		<title><![CDATA[VoteUK - Some Progress!]]></title>
		<link>https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2009/08/voteuk-some-progress/</link>
					<comments>https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2009/08/voteuk-some-progress/#respond</comments>
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		<pubDate>Sat, 22 Aug 2009 17:54:07 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[voteuk]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FoI]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[vote]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://shkspr.mobi/blog/?p=424</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[As you may recall from previous instalments of my thrilling blog, I&#039;m trying to find the location of every polling station in the UK.  This is proving to be rather tricky - if not impossible.  The  data aren&#039;t centrally held and, in any case, polling stations aren&#039;t announced until an election is called.  So I went for the next best thing.  Using the wonderful What Do They Know site to make a Fr…]]></description>
										<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>As you may recall from previous instalments of my thrilling blog, I'm trying to find the location of every polling station in the UK.</p>

<p>This is proving to be rather tricky - if not impossible.&nbsp; The&nbsp; data aren't centrally held and, in any case, polling stations aren't announced until an election is called.</p>

<p>So I went for the next best thing.&nbsp; Using the wonderful <a href="http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/">What Do They Know</a> site to make a <a href="http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/postcodes_within_constituency_bo">Freedom of Information Act request</a>, I asked the Electoral Commission for details of every council and which postcodes they cover for elections.</p>

<p>I'm delighted to say that, after a friendly chat with the very helpful Iredia Oboh I now have the data I need!</p>

<p>Check out the nearly finished <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20090827214319/http://voteuk.shkspr.mobi/">VOTEUK</a>.</p>

<p>I have a table listing every one of the 17 million postcodes in the UK.&nbsp; Each postcode has a "Council ID".</p>

<p>I have a table listing every Council with their contact details and their "Council ID".</p>

<p>Using the joy that is MySQL I can take a postcode and find the details of the Council who administer elections in that area.</p>

<pre>$query = "SELECT Council_ID from postcode_councilID WHERE postcode = '". $postcode . "'";
$result=mysql_query($query);
$row = mysql_fetch_array($result);
$council_id = $row["Council_ID"];
$info_query = "SELECT * FROM councils WHERE Council_ID = " . $council_id;
$info_result=mysql_query($info_query);
$info_row = mysql_fetch_array($info_result);</pre>

<p>So, I can take <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20110724053126/http://voteuk.shkspr.mobi/?p=about">W1A 1AA</a> and find that it's administered by Westminster Council, their email address, phone number and postcode.</p>

<p>The data can be found on the <a href="http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/postcodes_within_constituency_bo#incoming-40909">FoI request</a>. Note that the CSV files are in UTF-16. You may wish to convert them to UTF-8 or ASCII depending on what you will be doing with the data.</p>
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