Address requirements Royal Mail (United Kingdom)

Letters sent to the United Kingdom, once printed, are forwarded to Royal Mail for delivery. From this point onwards, further responsibility lies with Royal Mail. To ensure that your letters can be processed smoothly and for the agreed prices by Royal Mail, it is important that the recipient addresses comply with specific requirements.

In this article, we have summarised the most important address requirements of Royal Mail for you.

To provide our customers with the best possible support in complying with these requirements, Pingen checks the recipient address for additional requirements for letters to the United Kingdom starting January 20th 2025. Learn more about the address checks of Pingen

If there are issues processing the recipient's address, Royal Mail may reject the letter or only deliver it for a surcharge. In such cases, no reimbursement will be made as the correct addressing is the sender’s responsibility and the costs cover the additional processing effort. To ensure that the address meets the postal address requirements, we recommend sending a test letter via Pingen and verifying successful delivery. In this way, potential problems can be recognised and rectified at an early stage to ensure smooth delivery.

Address requirements Royal Mail:

Address positioning

To make the recipient's address clearly legible in the envelope window, the address must be placed within the address area. The following dimensions must be observed:

• Distance from the edge: 22 mm from the left (x), 60 mm from the top (y)
• Address area size: 85.5 mm x 25.5 mm

Address structure

To ensure that the recipient's address can be processed by Royal Mail, the following order must be respected:

• Recipient or company name
• Further recipient designations (optional)
• Premise or house number and street in one line in this order. Additional information such as building, entrance, floor and other details must be provided on the address line above.
• Name of the double dependent locality or dependent thoroughfare (optional)
• Name of the district, dependent locality or thoroughfare (optional)
• POST TOWN in capital letters
• POSTCODE consisting of 5 to 7 characters, written in capital letters. The postcode must always be on the last address line. The first 2-5 characters must be separated from the last 3 characters by one or two spaces. Separation with dots or special characters is not permitted. Additional information on the recipient country (country code or ISO identifier) must be omitted.

Important: For Organisations with the default destination country United Kingdom, it is mandatory to omit the destination country (e.g. UK, England, Great Britain or United Kingdom) from local letters.

Usually accepted by Royal Mail:

Usually not accepted by Royal Mail:

Fonts

Royal Mail defines specific information regarding font formatting:

Font size (height of verse)

Recommended font size:

• 10 pt to 12 pt in "regular" (normal) font style

Character spacing

End of a character to the beginning of the next character:

• Minimum: 0.25 mm

Word spacing

The space between blocks of digits and words:

• Maximum: 5.0 mm
• Usually one or two spaces

Line spacing (weft)

Uniform line spacing between the descenders of the top line and the ascenders of the bottom line for the entire address:

• Minimum: 1.0 mm
• Maximum: 4.0 mm

Font & colour

For the recipient's address to be properly read, a clear font with an easily readable font size is mandatory.

• Recommended fonts: Courier, Courier New, Letter Gothic, Lucida Console, Lucida Sans Typewriter, Word Gothic, Arial, Latha, Avant Garde, Lucida Sans, Calibri, Estrangelo Edessa, Mangal, Eurostile, News Gothic MT, Frankfurt Gothic, Univers, Franklin Gothic (Book), Optima, Gautami, Raavi, Geneva, Shruti, Gill Sans, Trebuchet MS, Helvetica, Tunga, Univers and Verdana
• Uniform font
• Font colour: Black
• No italics or decorative fonts
• No negative or bold fonts
• No fonts with connected letters
• No 3D or shaded fonts

Usually not accepted by Royal Mail:

Further details on the design:

Royal Mail specifies further requirements for address design:

• Address must be written left aligned
• No blank lines between the address lines
• The postcode must always be written in capital letters
• No punctuation marks (such as ‘.’ or ‘,’) in the postcode
• Neither postcode nor city must be underlined or blocked out.

Usually not accepted by Royal Mail:

Detailed documentation of the requirements by Royal Mail can be found here.

Address verification by Pingen (starting January 20th 2025)

To help you meet the requirements of Royal Mail, Pingen checks the recipient address for compliance with additional requirements starting January 20th 2025 for letters to the United Kingdom.

If Pingen detects that a document does not comply with the address requirements, it will receive the status "Action required" after upload. The "cover page feature" enables you to correct the recipient's address directly via Pingen. This feature automatically adds a new page in front of the document. This allows the address to be re-entered in compliance with the address requirements and placed on the cover page accordingly.

The following requirements are checked by Pingen starting January 20th 2025:

Missing postcode

For letters to the United Kingdom, the recipient address must contain a postcode with 5 to 7 characters. The postcode must be the last address line (before the optional country information) and must adhere the following formats:

Pingen checks whether there is a valid postcode in the recipient address.

Please ensure that the recipient address contains a valid postcode with 5 to 7 characters and is correctly separated by 1 or 2 spaces. For example, H23 6AA or H23 6AA (and not "H23 AA6" or "H236“ or "London“ or “London H23 AA6”).

Invalid postcode

For letters to the United Kingdom, the last address line (before the optional country designation) must consist of a valid postcode with 5 to 7 characters. If a postcode has fewer or more than 5 to 7 characters, it will be rejected by Pingen. Pingen checks whether the last address line contains a valid postcode with 5 to 7 characters.

Please ensure that the last address line contains a postcode with 5 to 7 characters, which is correctly separated. For example, H23 6AA or H23 6AA (and not “H23-6AA” or “H23.6AA” or "LONDON H23 6AA" or “H23 6AAA”).

Prohibited content on the postcode line

Royal Mail stipulates that the postcode must be the only content on the last address line (before the optional country designation). If there is additional content on the last address line besides the postcode, Royal Mail may charge penalties, which will be passed on by Pingen. For this reason, Pingen checks whether there is any other content (such as ‘H23 6AA London’) on the postcode line.

Please ensure that there is no other information in the address line with the postcode. For example, only H23 6AA (and not "H23 6AA London" or "H23 6AA (UK)” or “H23 6AA Great Britain” or “H23 6AA London”).

Unsupported ISO country code

The spelling GB-H23 6AA (i.e. ISO2 country code before the postcode) is no longer supported by Royal Mail for several years. For this reason, Pingen checks whether there is an ISO2 country code (such as “GB-“) on the line with the postcode.

Please ensure that the country name is stated on the last address line and that the address line with the postcode does not have a country designation. For example, H23 6AA (and not “GB-H23 6AA”).

Incorrect postcode spelling

For letters to the United Kingdom, the postcode must consist of 5 to 7 characters and be written in capital letters. The front 2-5 characters must be separated from the back 3 characters by one (optionally two) spaces. Pingen checks whether the postcode consists of capital letters and is correctly separated by one or two spaces.

Please ensure that the postcode is written in capital letters and correctly separated. For example, H23 6AA or H23 6AA (and not "h23 6aa" or "H236AA").

Country designation on the last address line

Royal Mail specifies that for local letters to the United Kingdom, the country should not be stated in the address. Pingen checks, whether United Kingdom is stated as the destination country for local letters.

For Organisations with the default recipient country United Kingdom, please ensure that there is no country name (such as United Kingdom, UK or England) on the last address line.

Invalid address structure (soon)

When sending to the United Kingdom, a recipient must be specified in the address. Furthermore, no empty lines (or lines without content) are permitted between the various address lines. In addition, the town/city must be located above the address line with the postcode and either the district or the thoroughfare must be specified above this line. Each address component must be on a separate line and none of these address components may be split over several address lines.

Please ensure that the address contains a recipient and no blank lines between the address lines, and that the address line with the district or thoroughfare is followed by the address line with the town/city. The last address line must only contain the postcode.

Important:

For technical reasons, Pingen cannot carry out a complete verification of the requirements by Royal Mail. The address check by Pingen serves solely to help identify various problems before sending the letter. However, it is the sender's responsibility to ensure that letters sent to the United Kingdom via Pingen comply with Royal Mail regulations. Any additional expenses due to incorrect addressing will be charged by Pingen.

Note: The illustrations in this article are not to scale.