SP8 4AU Dorset

Live postcode, introduced November 2003. Ward: Gillingham. Region: South West.

Streets

Council tax

What each band costs in Dorset in 2026-27: Band D £2,765 a year on average, including the police, fire and any county and parish charges.

ABCDEFGH
£1,843£2,151£2,458£2,765£3,379£3,994£4,608£5,530

Homes by band in the neighbourhood around this postcode: most are in band C (36% of about 950 homes).

Sources: Valuation Office Agency, Council Tax: stock of properties, homes at 31 March 2026 (counts rounded to the nearest 10; some small counts withheld), for the neighbourhood (census area of about 700 homes) around it, not just this postcode; Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, council tax levels 2026-27. Bands are charged as fixed shares of Band D; the actual bill depends on the parish and on discounts such as the single-person discount. Check a home's own band with the official council tax band checker.

Planning and heritage

  • Conservation area: no postcode centre in this postcode is in one.
  • Listed buildings within 100 m of this postcode: none.
  • Article 4 direction (removing permitted development rights): none recorded, though not every council has published theirs.
  • Tree preservation orders: none recorded, though not every council has published theirs.
  • Green belt: no.

Brownfield land registered for housing within 1 km (0.6 miles)

Source: planning.data.gov.uk (Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government), compiled from councils and, for listed buildings, Historic England's National Heritage List. Conservation areas, Article 4 directions, tree preservation areas and the green belt are checked at each postcode's centre. Listed buildings and protected trees are counted within 100 m of this postcode. Councils publish Article 4 directions, tree preservation orders and brownfield registers to different standards, and some not yet. Planning applications are not here: there is no national open record of them yet.

Flood risk

Rivers, the sea or surface water: in this postcode, 1 address is in areas at high risk, 3 at medium risk and 1 at low risk. Each address counts once, at the higher of its rivers-and-sea and surface-water risk.

Rivers and the sea alone: of the 6 homes the Environment Agency counts, 0 are in areas at high risk, 0 medium, 4 low and 0 very low.

High: 3.3% (1 in 30) or more chance of flooding a year. Medium: 1% to 3.3%. Low: 0.1% to 1%. Very low: under 0.1%. The rivers and sea figures allow for flood defences. Counts cover whole postcodes, which can include other streets.

Flood zone for planning: the postcode centre is in flood zone 2. Zone 2 is between 0.1% and 1% a year from rivers (0.1% and 0.5% from the sea), ignoring defences.

Sources: Environment Agency Flood risk: postcode search tool data (loaded 29 October 2026), Risk of Flooding from Rivers and Sea: postcodes in areas at risk (loaded 29 October 2026) and Flood Map for Planning (loaded 28 October 2026). Flood zones are checked at each postcode's centre point. These are models of areas, which their publishers say are not suitable for showing whether an individual property is at risk, and they do not cover flooding from sewers or drains. Check an address on the official long-term flood risk service.

Height above sea level

The postcode's 6 addresses are between 73 m and 74 m above sea level (73 m on average).

Source: Ordnance Survey, OS Terrain 50, July 2026: the height of the ground on a 50 m grid, read at each address, in metres above Ordnance Datum (mean sea level at Newlyn). It is the lie of the land, not floor or threshold levels, and is accurate to a few metres. Being low-lying is not in itself a flood risk; the flood section above says what the flood maps show.

Broadband

Superfast 100%, ultrafast 0%, gigabit 0% of premises; 0% cannot get 10 Mbit/s. Ofcom Connected Nations, data as at January 2026.

Getting around

Sources: Department for Transport, NaPTAN (every public transport stop), as at 31 October 2026; Office of Rail and Road, Estimates of station usage 2024–25 (which stations are on the National Rail network, and their journeys: entries and exits in the year to March); OurAirports (public domain, kept by volunteers); car parks and charging points from Overture Maps Foundation, release 2026-10-21.0, which gathers business listings from Meta, Microsoft, Foursquare and others: not an official register, so some will be missing, private or out of date. Distances are straight lines from the postcode's centre, not routes, and say nothing about how often anything runs. Stations opened since the end of ORR's year appear when ORR publishes the next one, each December; heritage railways are left out.

NearestDistance
Railway stationsGillingham (Dorset) 358,000 journeys in 2024–25750 m (0.5 miles)
Templecombe 92,000 journeys in 2024–2511 km (6.9 miles)
Tisbury 191,000 journeys in 2024–2513.8 km (8.6 miles)
Bus stops10 stops within 400 m (0.2 miles), 42 within 800 m (0.5 miles); nearest Shreen Way Bay130 m
EV charging points1 within 1.6 km (1 mile); nearest Be.EV Charging Station440 m (0.3 miles)
Airport with scheduled flightsBournemouth Airport BOH42 km (26 miles)
Nearest large airportBristol Airport BRS49 km (30 miles)

Local services

Sources: NHS Organisation Data Service, as at 31 October 2026: GP practices, community pharmacies and dental practices with an NHS contract, open now, each placed at the centre of its postcode; hospitals are NHS trust and Welsh health board sites named as hospitals, and may not have an emergency department. Police stations and cash machines from Overture Maps Foundation, release 2026-10-21.0, which gathers business listings: not an official register, so some will be missing or out of date. Distances are straight lines from the postcode's centre. Nothing here says whether a practice is taking new patients or a dentist new NHS patients.

NearestDistance
GP surgeries1 practices within 1.6 km (1 mile); nearest Gillingham Medical Practice580 m (0.4 miles)
Pharmacies2 pharmacies within 1.6 km (1 mile); nearest Gillingham Pharmacy370 m
NHS dentists2 practices within 1.6 km (1 mile); nearest Mydentist - Lanark Villas - Gillingham490 m (0.3 miles)
HospitalWestminster Memorial Hospital6.5 km (4 miles)
Police stationDorset Police330 m
Cash machines4 machines within 800 m (0.5 miles); nearest The Cooperative Food Gillingham, Green Parade Cashzone270 m

Parks and green space

Source: Ordnance Survey, OS Open Greenspace, April 2026: public parks and gardens, play spaces, playing fields and allotments, with their entrances. Distances are straight lines from the postcode's centre to a site's nearest entrance (or its edge where none is recorded), not walking routes; sizes are the area OS maps for each site. Some sites, such as school playing fields, may not be open to the public.

NearestDistance
Park or garden2 within 800 m (0.5 miles); nearest Unnamed 9,940 m²640 m (0.4 miles)
Largest park within 800 m (0.5 miles)Unnamed 3.0 ha650 m (0.4 miles)
Play area6 within 800 m (0.5 miles); nearest Unnamed 470 m²40 m
Playing field3 within 800 m (0.5 miles); nearest Unnamed 5.1 ha560 m (0.3 miles)
Allotments1 within 800 m (0.5 miles); nearest Unnamed 3,990 m²480 m (0.3 miles)

Within 800 m (0.5 miles): 2 parks and gardens, 4.0 hectares in all.

Landmarks

The nearest historic landmark is Church of St Mary, a listed building (Grade I), 410 m (0.3 miles) south-west. 37 listed buildings are within 1 km (0.6 miles), 1 of them Grade I.

Historic places
NameWhat it isFrom the postcode's centre
Church of St MaryListed building, Grade I410 m (0.3 miles) south-west
Remains of East Haimes House and the adjacent section of the deer park paleScheduled monument690 m (0.4 miles) east
King's Court Palace moated siteScheduled monument1 km (0.6 miles) south-east
Natural landmarks within 5 km (3.1 miles)
NameWhat it isFrom the postcode's centre
Lodden LakesLake or reservoir1.2 km (0.7 miles) south
Easterley CopseWood1.3 km (0.8 miles) north-east
King's Court WoodWood1.9 km (1.2 miles) east
Little MarshWetland2 km (1.3 miles) north-west
Hunger HillHill3.2 km (2 miles) south
Bainly BottomValley3.4 km (2.1 miles) west

Sources: Historic England's registers through planning.data.gov.uk (MHCLG), and Cadw through DataMapWales (Welsh Government): World Heritage Sites within 10 km (6.2 miles), battlefields within 5 km (3.1 miles), registered parks and gardens within 3 km (1.9 miles), scheduled monuments within 2 km (1.2 miles), and Grade I and II* listed buildings within 1 km (0.6 miles). Ordnance Survey, OS Open Names, October 2026: named hills, valleys, lakes, woods, wetlands and coast (it has no rivers). Distances are in a straight line to the middle of each site, and being on a register does not mean there is public access.

Air quality

Source: Defra, modelled background air pollution, annual means for 2024, for the 1 km square that holds the postcode's centre. These are background levels, away from the kerb: beside a busy road nitrogen dioxide in particular can be several times higher. UK limits are the legal annual limits for England and Wales; the World Health Organization's 2021 guidelines are much stricter, and most towns and cities are above them.

Annual means in µg/m³ (micrograms per cubic metre of air)
PollutantHereUK limitWHO guideline
Nitrogen dioxide (NO2)5.14010
Fine particles (PM2.5)5.9205
Particles (PM10)9.64015

All three are within the UK legal limits; PM2.5 is above the WHO guideline, as in most towns and cities.

Road and rail noise

Source: Defra, strategic noise mapping Round 4 (England), modelled for 2021 and published in December 2023, and its airport maps of the same round for the fifteen largest English airports, published in April 2026: Lden, the average sound level over a whole day with extra weight for the evening and night, on a 10 m grid, read at each address. These are models of traffic, not measurements; they leave out smaller airports and airfields, industry and neighbours, and a room at the back of a house is often much quieter than the front. The World Health Organization's guidelines are 53 dB for road traffic, 54 dB for railways and 45 dB for aircraft (below the lowest level shown here).

Addresses by modelled noise level (Lden, dB)
LevelRoad trafficRailways
Under 5566

None of the postcode's 6 addresses is modelled at 55 dB or more from road traffic or railways.

People and work

Source: ONS Census 2021, taken on 21 March 2021, for the Output Area (a small census area of about 125 households) that this postcode is in: 394 residents in 163 households. The census was taken during a lockdown, so working from home is high and travel to work low compared with now. ONS swaps a few records between neighbouring areas and adds small amounts of noise to counts to protect privacy, so small differences mean little. Industry is not published for areas this small.

Who lives here

Around this postcodeEngland
Median age5340
Children under 1513%17%
Aged 65 and over35%18%

Homes

Around this postcodeEngland
Owned (outright or with a mortgage)88%61%
Owned outright58%33%
Shared ownership0%1%
Social rented1%17%
Private rented11%21%

Work and commuting

Around this postcodeEngland
Adults (16 and over) in work49%57%
Unemployment (of those working or looking for work)5%6%
Retired (of adults)40%22%
Long-term sick or disabled (of adults)3%4%
Work mainly from home (of those in work)20%32%
Travel to work by car or van66%48%
By train, Underground, metro or tram2%4%
By any public transport, including bus2%8%
On foot or by bicycle9%10%
Work within 10 km (6 miles) of home (of those who travel to work)52%65%
Work 30 km (19 miles) or more away32%8%

Education and languages

Around this postcodeEngland
Degree or other higher qualification, Level 4+ (of adults)29%34%
No qualifications16%18%
Apprenticeship as highest qualification3%5%
Main language English (aged 3 and over)100%91%
Cannot speak English well or at all0%2%

Deprivation

The neighbourhood around this postcode is in decile 4 of 10 on the English Indices of Deprivation 2025, where 1 is the most deprived tenth of England's 33,755 neighbourhoods and 10 the least.

Source: English Indices of Deprivation 2025 (Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government), by LSOA (about 1,500 people), through the ONS Postcode Directory. The index combines income, employment, health, education, crime, housing and living environment; it ranks areas against each other and does not describe any one household. Ranks in England and Wales are worked out separately and cannot be compared.

The full dossier for this postcode's main street is on Mulberry Close.