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The postal counties of the United Kingdom, now known officially as the former postal counties, were postal subdivisions in routine use by the Royal Mail until 1996. The raison d'être of the postal county - as opposed to any other kind of county - was to aid the sorting of mail by enabling differentiation between like-sounding post towns. Since 1996 this has been done by using the outward code (first half) of the postcode instead. For operational reasons the former postal counties, although broadly based on the counties of the United Kingdom, did not match up to their boundaries; in some cases with significant differences.
According to the Royal Mail, the former postal county data no longer forms part of postal addresses. It was removed from the Postcode Address File database in 2000 and does not form part of its code of practice for changing addresses. Despite this, county data is routinely sold to companies, ostensibly in order for them to cleanse their own address data. As the former postal county data was the last to be in routine use, some organisations have continued to use this obsolete data as part of postal addresses. In 2009 the Royal Mail code of practice consultation included discussion of the possibility of replacing the currently supplied 'alias data' with an up-to-date county information data field. In 2010 the regulator advised Royal Mail to cease supply of county data altogether and a timetable has been put in place for this to occur between 2013 and 2016.
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