How to cleanse a list of UPRNs into verified addresses
Unique Property Reference Numbers (UPRNs) have become a necessity across a growing number of industries. Local government, housing, utilities, insurance, and property technology all rely on them as a stable way to identify a location, and increasingly as the common key for sharing data between organisations. The systems that hold these records, however, are not always in sync with one another. Teams often end up with UPRNs that are accurate in themselves, but sit alongside address fields that are incomplete, outdated, or missing entirely. ClickCleanse handles this through its UPRN Lookup mode, resolving each UPRN to a current, PAF-matched address in the browser.
ClickCleanse is a browser-based tool that cleanses and enriches address data from a CSV file. Its UPRN Lookup mode takes each UPRN in your file and resolves it against an authoritative address dataset, including AddressBase, PAF, and OSNI Pointer (for Northern Ireland coverage), to return the full postal address, geolocation, and related attributes.
UPRN cleanse tends to be the better starting point in a few specific situations:
Records inherited from a local authority, housing association, or utility dataset, where the UPRN is the primary key and the address detail is either missing or held elsewhere.
Exports from GIS, asset management, or property systems that store the UPRN but not the full postal address.
Datasets where the address fields are incomplete, outdated, or inconsistent, and the UPRN is the most reliable identifier available.
Merging or reconciling records across multiple systems, where the UPRN acts as the common key between them.
Cleanse API is the option teams reach for when they want to build UPRN matching and address cleansing directly into their own systems.
Bulk Cleanse handles larger, one-off database jobs where it helps to have our team involved.
The Excel add-in extends the same service into the workbook itself, with no limit on the number of rows you can cleanse. Read more about our newest cleanse add-in here.
ClickCleanse sits alongside these as the browser option for jobs of up to 1,100 rows.
If your UPRN cleanse work fits within that limit and you would rather not move the file between tools, ClickCleanse is usually the quickest route.
If you have a list of UPRNs ready, you can upload it into ClickCleanse and try a UPRN Lookup straight away. The Browser Address Cleanse guide walks through each step in more detail.