What is a Unique Street Reference Number (USRN)?

A USRN is a unique numeric identifier for every street, lane, track, footpath and cycle path in Great Britain.

USRNs consist of eight digits. There are around 1.4 million USRNs in England and Wales alone. Once attached to a street the USRN never changes and only ever relates to that street.

Article updated: July 2026

Here we will look at what USRNs or Unique Street Reference Numbers are and can be used for.

An Introduction to USRNs

A USRN gives each street one fixed number, and that solves three problems that ordinary street addresses cause:

• There are many streets, even in the same town, with similar or even the same names. USRNs are unique, a set of numbers with only one code per street.
• Conventional street addresses can also be misspelt or misunderstood. There is no such issue with a USRN.
• Some old street names and Welsh street names can have unconventional and often unusual formats, which the digital world finds difficult to handle. USRNs solve this by making giving each street a simple row of numbers as the code.

Consequences of using conventional street addresses include misdirected or lost parcels, late deliveries of goods and difficulties in coordinating road works and utility works.

Postcodes can be of some use in identifying streets, but postcodes do not provide a complete solution.

Today, we live in a world that is full of data and is increasingly data-driven. Effective use of data can make things much more efficient. Get the data wrong, though, and it can give a completely misleading view of an area or a specific property. UPRNs do the same job for individual properties that USRNs do for streets.

USRNs are simply a way of standardising and also digitising street address data to make it more efficient for anybody working on the street or providing services or utilities.

USRNs allow different users to collate, validate, share and collaborate using data from different databases all based on a single common identifier. Every organisation that uses them can be sure they are talking about the same street.

Where Do USRNs Come From?

USRNs come from the street data compiled by the 174 local authorities in England and Wales who are legally required to name streets. The data is collected and validated by the GeoPlace organisation. The official record of USRNs is contained within the National Street Gazetteer or NSG and the OS MasterMap Highways Network.

USRNs are compiled for Scotland by the Improvement Service and for Northern Ireland by the Department for Infrastructure.

The Government has said that official systems, services and applications that store or publish data sets containing property and street information must use the USRN and UPRN identifiers.

What the USRN Can Be Used For

USRNs are used to manage work on streets, from road maintenance and repairs to utility works. All 174 local highway authorities use them. So do the Welsh Government, National Highways and Transport for London (TfL). The contractors and utility companies that work with these authorities use them too.

With everyone using the same reference for the same street, that work should be quicker, cheaper and more accurate.

USRN data is used in the Department for Transport's Street Manager service to plan, manage and record roadworks.

USRNs are used by these organisations to identify streets accurately, to apply for and process permissions, to keep records of work required, ordered, in progress and completed and of the costs involved.

The use of USRNs can extend beyond just road maintenance, repairs and utility works, however. It can be used by many property data tools in connection with issues such as investment analysis, planning trends, operating active travel networks and planning services. The emergency services are also able to use USRNs.

The USRN also has statistical use. Socio-economic data and statistics on for example crime or the environment, can make use of USRNs.

The USRN has uses in the property industry by many UK property portals and in proptech. USRNs can be used to accurately identify streets in property platforms and apps. For an investor, that can help when comparing sold prices on the same street, which is one of the checks in our guide to how to do due diligence on property.

The UPRN and USRN identifiers, along with their associated grid references, are available for anyone to use under the Open Government Licence or OGL.

How To Find a Unique Street Reference Number

If you wish to find the USRN for a street or find a street from a USRN and locate it on a map then one way to do this is using FindMyStreet.

The FindMyStreet data is created and maintained by local authorities and collected and managed centrally by GeoPlace.

FindMyStreet covers every street in England and Wales. It will tell you where a street is, what its official name is, whether open or under construction, whether classified or not, and who is responsible for maintaining that street including which local authority if applicable.

FindMyStreet is for personal, non-commercial use. You can perform up to 30 searches every day for free. Commercial products are available for commercial users and for higher search volumes.

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