Front of House

[Birchy]

Does one legally have to have a letter box, door number or house name? Sounds a stupid question, but are there legal requirements/obligations for a house or flat?

[darth vader]

no. Yes or yes - it has to have some way of being distinguished from other houses in that area (either a number or name). Unless you were the only house in a one-house village, in which case your address could by "The house, Villagetown,......."

[darth vader]

...though the postie is not obliged to deliver mail unles he can post it.

[KEJ2000]

Yes, so the tax man can find you!

[Toglet]

No, houses don't need names or numbers, because the people across the road from me, who have been living in the same house since new (over 60 years), have never named their house, and none of them in the entire road have a number. They do have a letterbox though. Letters are addressed to them by their name and the road.

[woofgang]

Your house will be numbered or named when it was built. What you don't have to do is display either although a colleague of mine who is an ex fireman says that this is not a good idea and increases your chances of death if you do have a fire. You don't have to have a post box or letter flap in the door...again, the post office don't have to deliver your mail if you make it inpossible for them to do so

[gazzawazza]

I can't understand why anyone wouldn't want a house number. It only makes things more difficult for people trying to deliver items or for the emergency services to find in a hurry.

Re woofgang's answer, I am a firefighter and these addresses are the bane of our life... There's a number of estates on our patch where the planners decided to have a little bit of fun with us by calling whole areas by one street name even though these areas are shaped like a rabbit warren with various bits blocked off here and there. Then they decided to paint all the door frames brown and put house numbers of exactly the same colour on! Incredible!!! Although we regularly do topography and have certain schemes in place it's bad enough trying to find these numbers in broad daylight when you have plenty of time. Now imagine trying to find these same addresses at 4am when control have told you there's definitely people trapped inside and the light is poor and you know that to give these people a reasonable chance of surviving you have to get them out within 3 or 4 minutes... That's when you really wish people would number their houses clearly...