M postcode area

Postcode district boundaries: Bing / Google

The M postcode area, also known as the Manchester postcode area, is a group of several postcode districts in Greater Manchester, England.

The area is divided into three post towns: Manchester, Salford, and Sale. The Manchester post town forms most of the area, and the other two post towns are enclaves within it.

It includes parts of every borough in Greater Manchester, including small parts of Heaton Chapel, Heaton Mersey and Reddish in Stockport. The entirety of the metropolitan district of the City of Manchester itself is included within the area, except for Ringway, which is in WA15. The postcode area also includes nearly all of the City of Salford and most of the borough of Trafford.

Coverage

The approximate coverage of the postcode districts:

Note: The original M10 postcode is obsolete, having been re-coded as M40 in 1993. Sometimes on Coronation Street they quote M10 as their postcode, for example on 5 November 2010 Kevin Webster quoted the postcode for the Garage as M10 9KC. In the 20.30pm episode which aired on 25 May 2012 a driving licence belonging to Karl Munro was shown to have the M10 postcode once again. On another episode of Coronation Street aired on 13 September 2013, the postcode M10 9KC was also used by Jason Grimshaw. The garage owned by Kevin Webster and Tyrone Dobbs shows an M10 postcode as their address on the sign.

List of postcode areas in the United Kingdom

For the purposes of directing mail, the United Kingdom is divided by Royal Mail into postcode areas. The postcode area is the largest geographical unit used and forms the initial characters of the alphanumeric UK postcode. There are currently 121 geographic postcode areas in use in the UK and a further 3 often combined with these covering the Crown Dependencies of Guernsey, Jersey and Isle of Man.

Subdivision

Each postcode area is further divided into post towns and postcode districts. There are on average 20 postcode districts to a postcode area. The London post town is instead divided into several postcode areas.

Scope

The single or pair of letters chosen for postcode areas are generally intended as a mnemonic for the places served. Postcode areas, post towns and postcode districts do not follow political boundaries and usually serve much larger areas than the place names with which they are associated. For example, within the PA postcode area the PA1 and PA78 postcode districts are 140 miles apart; and the eight postcode areas of the London post town cover only 40% of Greater London. The remainder of its area is covered by sections of twelve adjoining postcode areas: EN, IG, RM, DA, BR, TN, CR, SM, KT, TW, HA and UB.