Frequently Asked Questions

Points of Interest are features that people may wish to visit or know the location of. These features can range from tourist attractions, businesses, public buildings, service provision, retail outlets and leisure facilities to landscape features. These can be grouped into features that typically have an address as is the case for shops, schools, hotels and restaurants and those that are typically non addressable as are lakes, car parks, telephone boxes, cattle grids, public toilets and letter boxes. Each feature is classified and allocated a geocode allowing users to know "what is where".

PointX aims to provide the most comprehensive, consistent and current Points of Interest data for Great Britain. This powerful index of geocoded business and feature names brings together information from organisations in both the public and private sectors and contains links to the rich seams of information they hold. PointX's business model focuses on providing high quality Points of Interest data, leaving other organisations to develop applications and services.

PointX is a joint venture company owned by the Ordnance Survey and Landmark Information Group. It was formed in March 2001 after an open competition in which Ordnance Survey sought partners to help it build a Points of Interest database. The PointX team is based in Exeter and includes staff from both partner companies.

PointX provides Points of Interest data for Great Britain. Customers can choose from a menu of geographic areas including England, Scotland, Wales and the 9 Government Office Regions (also known as Regional Development Areas and European Electoral Regions). Other standard or bespoke areas are also available on request subject to minimum order values.

Where possible PointX will have assigned coordinates for the feature that fall within it’s real world footprint. In some instances it has not been possible to locate the feature precisely so the reported coordinates will be in the same street or geographic locality of the feature. The Positional Accuracy Code reported for each feature indicates the confidence that we believe the coordinates relate to. For nearly all types of feature Version 2 will only contain those where PointX have been able to report them with a Positional Accuracy Code indicating they are to the address/location or adjacent to the address/location. However Cash Machines and Public Payphones records with a street or geographic locality level can and will be reported.

PointX is continually updating its database as new information becomes available. Updates are supplied quarterly as standard but more frequent updates can be arranged on request if required.

The data is supplied as pipe | delimited ASCII text files on CD as standard however other file formats and media can be provided by agreement with our distributor.

Yes, if you wish to use PointX data in an application that displays it against mapping. PointX does not in itself supply mapping or aerial photography backdrops against which to display its data, however, these services are offered by our Distributor and value added resellers who would be happy to discuss any requirements

What is a Verified Address?

PointX sources information it reports from a range of authoritative suppliers. Numbering over 170 these include the Ordnance Survey, Market Locations (who are replacing Thomson Directories between 2008 and 2010 in a phased program), Department for Transport, Transport for London, Police, Fire and Ambulance Authorities, Education Authorities, Royal Mail, Visit Britain, LINK Interchange Network, The Court Service, UK Payphone Directory, Little Chef, National Trust for Scotland, National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux to name but a few. A fuller breakdown of these suppliers and how their data is used is available to PointX customers.