4.3.1 Addresses & Phone Numbers

It is recommended that you adopt a consistent approach to the way that Addresses and Phone Numbers are input into Member Records.

Address Guidance
No/Name is merged with Street on the Address Labels download when No/Name is no more than 7 characters long. If greater than 7 characters they are shown on separate lines so that the text is not too wide for the label.

• You may sometimes wish to add commas in the No/Name field to break up the text and to make the Address Labels look sensible, as shown in the examples below.
• No/Name can have at most 25 characters and there are circumstances where this is not enough and words have to be abbreviated or other compromises made.
• No/Name and Postcode (only) are used in Gift Aid reports for HMRC and need to identify the dwelling. Current HMRC guidance states: “As a minimum HMRC will accept the number (or name as appropriate) of their home and their full postcode”. It pays to be consistent with the way that the address fields are filled in. This makes searching and filtering easier in Excel address exports, e.g. when searching for everyone that lives in a specific street or district.
• An official address can be checked at www.royalmail.com/find-a-postcode which will list all the house entries for a postcode. This will help with deciding whether, for example, just “Flat 3” is acceptable or “Flat 3, 10” is preferable (see table below).
• Typical examples of recommended No/Name & Street combinations are shown below, followed by the Address Labels download, TAM List & Gift Aid submissions generated from these addresses:

Telephone Number Guidance
It is recommended that home Telephone numbers are input in a consistent format. This makes them easier to read and to spot any incorrect numbers that contain the wrong number of digits. The recommended format varies depending on the number of digits in the area code, e.g.

• 02x xxxx xxxx   For Cardiff, Coventry, London, Portsmouth, Southampton, N Ireland
• 01xx xxx xxxx   For most other major cities
• 01xxx xxxxx(x)  For smaller cities, provincial towns and rural areas
• 01xxxx xxxx(x)  For rural North West England and Borders

There is no recognised standard format for Mobile numbers. 07xx xxx xxxx is often used, or you may wish to use the same format as for your home telephone numbers.

v1	2021-04-25	Lyn Bossons	Copy of KB article with the same name