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Hargreaves Lansdown poor service
Comments
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There is only one number in my post code area…..[Removed by Forum Team] was fine but , Upper [Removed by Forum Team] is what a computer check didn't like. Upper [Removed by Forum Team] is a historical reference differentiating from Lower [Removed by Forum Team] which is a mile away in a different postcode……. strange thing is, my wifes ISA account is still listed under the offending "[Removed by Forum Team]" address and they haven't even mentioned it. My adjusted address is now 1[Removed by Forum Team].
I don't have a problem with having to allign things so all addresses are exactly the same…..my concern was with the way it was done and the respect that I felt was lacking in my interaction.
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On 16/2/26 Hargreaves Lansdown decided there was an anomaly with my
postal address despite me being registered with them at this address
since 2009 and holding a SIPP,ISA and fund share accounts.You can find your correct postal address via this website:-
Most of these organisations will in one form or another validate their data against the Royal Mail PAF - the Postcode Address File is based on data submitted by each local authority (their LLPG) and Royal Mail is responsible for assigning postcodes to this data.
If you call your property by a name not in the LLPG it is likely to be highlighted as anomalous and may trigger this type of problem. People often have their property incorrectly named as something flattering e.g. Garden Flat when the LLPG has it registered as Basement Flat, and this alone may trigger this sort of anally-retentive KYC exercise. Or you could have simply put in the wrong postcode on your original application, HL have subsequently used a new version of PAF, identified your data as anomalous and the kafka-machine taken over from there.
For a useful exposition of why KYC is failing so badly you could do worse than read:- Oliver Bullough's - Everybody Loves Our Dollars. Spoiler - the crims don't need a false identity based on a wrong postcode as they shift US Dollars by the truckload, or use crypto-currency (which is why BitCoin will never fall to zero), or just wash the proceeds of crime in shipping.Or you could just accept that KYC is window dressing which does nothing to stop organised crime, but does screw over legitimate organisations as well as honest people.
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If you call your property by a name not in the LLPG it is likely to be highlighted as anomalous and may trigger this type of problem. People often have their property incorrectly named as something flattering e.g. Garden Flat when the LLPG has it registered as Basement Flat, and this alone may trigger this sort of anally-retentive KYC exercise. Or you could have simply put in the wrong postcode on your original application, HL have subsequently used a new version of PAF, identified your data as anomalous and the kafka-machine taken over from there.
The "Upper H…." bit added to the OP's address is a historic name for the area, not a house name the OP has chosen.
The Royal Mail address checker confirms the address for the postcode is [house number] ["Upper H…."] [streetname] [placename] - and the neighbouring properties have the same address apart from the number.
OP, it looks like someone has mucked up your address in the official database. If the "Upper H…." bit is meant to be included then it should be [house number] [streetname] ["Upper H…."] [placename].
Street naming and numbering is a local authority (district council) function - you might want to check with them whether there has been a renaming request (you should have been consulted) or if something else has happened. You can explain to them the problems the mash-up is causing you.
Posting your address on the forum is also against the forum rules, so you should delete it from your post. I've avoided referencing your address in this reply, except for "Upper H…." - which on its own isn't sufficient to identify your address, so hopefully will be OK as the post won't make sense without it.
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From the description one of 3 things seems likely:-
The poster has their address incorrect and the LLPG is right.
The LLPG is wrong and the poster is correct
They're both wrong!
It's unusual to have a district name before a street name, but my experience is that there are examples to prove the rule in most towns.
If the poster is incorrect they should adopt the correct address. If they believe the LLPG is wrong they can request it is amended.
Amendment to the LLPG in practice takes time. It used to be that changes are done periodically, and will also involve both OS and Royal Mail before a new PAF is issued. The new PAF will then have to be adopted by anyone that the poster comes into contact with (such as HL).
Like you, I would strongly discourage anyone from posting any personally identifiable information as it may be exploited. Similarly, personally identifiable information of others is inappropriate.
One final thought on this:- anyone who dislikes having an official address controlled by others can blame the poll tax - the initiative for the NLPG/LLPG was a product of local authorities' difficulty in identifying properties to serve poll tax demands to! My view is that the benefits far outweigh any downsides.
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It's unusual to have a district name before a street name, but my experience is that there are examples to prove the rule in most towns.
That isn't quite the issue in the OP's case. They have a locale name inserted between the house number and the street name, and since the locale name could represent a street name (for example https://www.google.com/search?q=upper+ground ) it means HL's systems have probably gone into meltdown thinking the OP doesn't live at the address they said they lived at.
A broadly equivalent example would be if 188-196 Regent St., London W1B 5BT were modified to 188-196 Soho, Regent St., London W1B 5BT instead of 188-196 Regent St., Soho, London W1B 5BT.
"188-196 Soho" could be a valid property address somewhere, but you won't find it within the W1B 5BT postcode.
From what I can see I think the LLPG is wrong and the poster is correct. Hence them needing to speak to the local council to clarify.
I'm not sure about the link between the poll tax and NLPG/LLPG. The authority I was working for at the time (an early adopter) was doing work on LLPG because it was a fundamental requirement to implement GIS. Prior to that each department maintained its own card indexes or databases of addresses which were full of errors and were virtually impossible to cross-reference. Two of which were the Electoral Register and the list of chargeable properties for Domestic Rates. The key issue with poll tax wasn't identifing properties (domestic rates were being paid on them already), it was identifying who was living in each property. It was an example though of where different datasets recorded postal addresses differently, and how using UPRNs was the only way forward as more services went digital.
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It may have changed (it's a long time since I have had any experience) but each authority was responsible for a Local Land and Property Gazeeter and this was amalgamated into a National dataset (NLPG). It was my experience that for every dataset I ever saw there were always anomalous records of the sort you describe - hence my thought it was one of 3 likely scenarios. Often the records for anomalous properties were related to flats/flats in courts/flats in courts in streets etc. But there were also ones which were just sui generis - and the poster's property may be one of these.
The initiative did fall out of the poll tax fiasco - typically authorities, as you say, had multiple datasets with conflicting information, and service failure related to this prompted the LLPG process. It was not uncommon to find a property on the corner of two streets to have two or more different addresses (one for each street, one for the house number, one for the flat number, one for the flat name etc) with multiple unrelated people at the same property using multiple different names, for the property to be subdivided illegally, to be an unregistered HMO, and none of this was consistent with the legal requirement for good service.
My understanding of the process was:-
local authority is responsible for street names and properties
Royal Mail responsible for allocation of postcodes to the above
OS responsible for names and relating postcodes for SatNav systems (the latter arising because of delivery problems).
It may have changed radically since.
If you were using a GIS product (such as ESRI) they would have provided the local authority with a GIS based on the LLPG hence the need to rationalise/standardise the other databases. Often this process of rationalisation would include the council tax database, rating databases, planning datasets, and others. In many authorities there were multiple datasets often for one department - for example, I knew of an LA with two different computerised planning application systems and an older set of books and paper plans with applications all of which had to be consulted prior to dealing with any new planning application.
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Royal Mail don't use LLPG in determining postal addresses. Postal addresses and postcodes long predate LLPG.
LLPG was introduced to standardise identification of land for the purpose of land registration and planing in 1999, and it obliged local authorities to keep a register that covered their area. It records the postal address that Royal Mail has created - it does not determine postal addresses.
Local authorities pick street names and allocate numbers to houses, but the rest of an address - such as locality and post town - is decided by Royal Mail. LLPG then simply records the address that Royal Mail has constructed.
Post towns can sometimes be completely different from the local authority in which a place is located, e.g.:
Addresses in Ringley, Stoneclough and Prestolee in postcode M26 have a locality and post town address of Radcliffe, Manchester, even though they are not in Radcliffe locality or in Manchester but in Kearsley, Bolton; and addresses with the address Radcliffe, Manchester that are actually in Radcliffe are all in Bury. And none of M26 is actually in Manchester, so the LLPGs for M26 are maintained by Bury Council and Bolton Council.
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The LLPG is used to form the dataset sent to RM for their postcode addressing exercise, and is the responsibility of the relevant local authority.
I'm fully aware of the PAF file - having used it in various guises since c1990 - so it predates the LLPG by the better part of 2 decades - but this is not inconsistent with the above.
There is no inconsistency between a postal address being in a different postal town from a local authority as the out part of a postcode determines the main sorting office - this is common across the country.
There are exceptions to this - London for example follows no such rules. Some postcodes additionally cover an organisation (and have no real relation with any geographic location) and some postcodes cover only an organisation because they exclusively occupy the physical extent of that postcode.
If you're looking for hard and fast rules you will spend a long and fruitless time as these systems have developed over many years within different organisations and have been mashed together later to meet the best needs of those organisations and others as required. There is no architectural consistency.
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