Finding out who your councillor is isn’t always easy is it? Even if you know which council provides your services, wards often have odd sounding names, and council websites don’t always have an easy postcode search. With this in mind, and now the Office of National Statistics have released a brand new API and because I’ve got a day off looking after my new puppy, I decided to have a play and see if I could make it easier.
First I trawled through the documentation to find the best API methods for my needs, it turns out that this URL did what I needed:
http://neighbourhood.statistics.gov.uk/NDE2/Disco/SearchSByAByPostcode?LevelTypeId=14&Postcode={POSTCODE}
This basically asks the NeSS Data Exchange to return the details of a ward (which in Office of National Statistics language is level type ID 14) which a particular postcode is in. Helpfully, I don’t get the SNAC ID straight away (you’ll see why I need this later), so I have to get the ONS internal ID, and make another API call:
http://neighbourhood.statistics.gov.uk/NDE2/Disco/GetAreaDetail?AreaId={AREA ID}
This gives a whole bunch of extra info about the area, including the SNAC ID (which is called the ExtCode). Once I have that, I can then move across to OpenlyLocal, where I can get the councillor’s information:
http://openlylocal.com/wards/snac_id/SNAC ID.xml
Once I’ve got this info, I can then display it all, like so! Obviously if the council isn’t on OpenlyLocal, then we can’t show their details, but we can say who their council is and what ward they’re in, and then, with a bit more jiggery pokery on the OpenlyLocal side, we can direct them to their local authority’s website, like so!
Give it a try yourself, and let me know any feedback in the ol’ comments below. Obviously, this only shows your district council if you’re in a two tier council, but I’m working on getting county council info later 
Oooh, it’s worth pointing out that you need a PSI click-use licence to publish the Data Exchange data on your own website, but it’s a doddle to apply for and goes live instantly!
Update: I’ve published the code on Github in case you want to see how I did it!
