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Background

We have provided the three free locators for OS Open Names, OS Codepoint Open and the BNG Locator for over 10 years and we know they are used by many people.

Since they were first introduced new versions of ArcGIS Locators have been released and the underlying architecture of services has changed a lot.

What is changing?

We have rebuilt the locators using the latest technology to ensure we can continue to provide the services to you as well as provide new options for reverse geocoding and enabling suggestions on some locators. Where possible we have maintained the same service, input and attribute names and types to avoid disruption. You may notice many more attribute fields returned in some cases, this reflects the updated formats of locators and geocoding services.

As part of the changes we have not only rebuilt the locators but are also moving to newer hosting environments and infrastructure to allow us to manage and scale the services effectively. This requires as part of the rollout for us to make some changes to the routing of the services through datahub.esriuk.com.

What next?

The services are up and running and have been tested by our team to make sure everything is working as expected ready for the switch.

The changes are being made outside of normal working hours, to allow the changes to propagate whilst usage is low.

The update to the services is live as of 15th January.

If you have queries regarding the changes then please contact Peter McDaid

UPDATE:

If you are experiencing issues when using the BNG locator in ArcGIS Online please restart your browser, clear the cache, and try again.

The service catalog for the BNG locator is different to the other locators and will return a page showing some JSON. This is expected as the BNG locator runs in a different technology to the other locators and does not have an HTML page. Any of the applications you use will be able to connect to it as normal.

The BNG locator is configured to accept a pair of coordinates separated by a space. There is an enhancement request to also allow coordinates to be separated by a comma. We will evaluate the change and look to implement the enhancement soon.

UPDATE 19/01/2026:

The enhancement to the BNG Locator to allow coordinates to be separated by a comma, as well as a space, has now been implemented.

UK Data Loader 7.3.1 released

We have released an updated version of UK Data Loader to address an issue with publishing locators created in ArcGIS Pro 3.4 to ArcGIS Enterprise 11.3 or earlier.

A change was made to the Create Locator tool in ArcGIS Pro 3.4 which has meant that to publish to older versions of ArcGIS Enterprise (11.3 or earlier) a compatibility flag needs to be set when running the tool.

The change at 7.3.1 is to ensure that flag is set.

In a future version we will add the ability for you to select the target version of ArcGIS Enterprise.

The updated tool can be downloaded here.

As always we are actively seeking feedback on your experiences with locators to drive our roadmap in the future. So please let us know your thoughts and ideas by emailing UKDataLoader@esriuk.com or contacting your Customer Success Manager.

New version of UK Data Loader released to support ArcGIS Pro 3.3

We have released an update to UK Data Loader (7.2.2) to support the release of ArcGIS Pro 3.3.

Due to an update in the underlying python version in the system, if you are using an older version of ArcGIS Pro when running the tools you will see the error message below:

When using the UK Data Loader you need to use the version that is compatible with the version of ArcGIS Pro you have installed. The full list of compatible versions can be found here.

For clarity

• If you are using ArcGIS Pro 3.3 then use version 7.2.2 of UK Data Loader

• If you are using ArcGIS Pro 3.2 or below then use version 7.2.1 of UK Data Loader

Further information on the releases of UK Data Loader can be found on the support pages here