How to Find the UPRN for Any Address in the UK

What is a UPRN?

A UPRN (Unique Property Reference Number) is a permanent numerical identifier, up to 12 digits long, assigned to every addressable location in Great Britain by Ordnance Survey. Think of it as the NHS number for a property: it stays with that specific location throughout its lifetime, regardless of changes to the address, ownership, or use.

UPRNs are used across government, emergency services, utilities, local authorities, and the property industry to uniquely identify properties and link data about them from multiple sources.

Why UPRNs Matter for Property Buyers

When you buy or rent a property, you are dealing with a specific physical location, but addresses can be ambiguous (multiple flats at the same house number, buildings with changed addresses, new developments where postcodes are shared). A UPRN removes that ambiguity.

More practically, UPRNs are used to link:

• EPC certificates from the EPC Register
• Title data from HM Land Registry
• Sold price records from HMLR Price Paid Data
• Flood risk assessments from the Environment Agency
• Planning application records from local authorities

Property Passport UK uses UPRN as the master key to aggregate all these datasets into a single property record.

How to Find a UPRN

Method 1: Property Passport UK (easiest)

1. Go to [propertypassport.uk/search](https://www.propertypassport.uk/search)

2. Enter the postcode or full address

3. Select the property from the list

4. The UPRN is displayed prominently at the top of the property page

This is the fastest way to look up a UPRN and simultaneously see all the data linked to it.

Method 2: Ordnance Survey Open UPRN Dataset

Ordnance Survey published UPRNs and USRNs as Open Data in 2020 under the Open Government Licence. The Open UPRN dataset can be downloaded from the OS Data Hub free of charge. However, it is a large dataset requiring technical skills to query.

Method 3: Local Authority Gazetteers

Local authorities maintain Local Land and Property Gazetteers (LLPGs) which feed into the national AddressBase dataset. Some councils provide UPRN lookup tools on their websites, particularly for planning and building control purposes.

UPRN vs Other Property Identifiers

A single UPRN may be linked to multiple title numbers (e.g. a building sold as individual flats) and vice versa.

The UPRN Open Data Release

In 2020, Ordnance Survey released UPRNs as open data following government pressure to make property identifiers freely available. This was significant because it enabled organisations to use UPRNs without licensing restrictions, facilitating data linking across government and the private sector.

The Open UPRN dataset contains over 43 million UPRNs covering all addressable locations in England, Scotland, and Wales. Property Passport UK uses this dataset combined with HMLR, EPC, and Environment Agency data to build comprehensive property records.