MIG wrote:

Deleting anything from databases always seems risky practice to me,
but I suppose it would be archived somehow.

True but in this case they have multiple counties in the database to handle
the various changes over the years (and even list some unitary authorities
as "counties") and it's probable that the regular shake-ups of local
government are creaing so many variants that it's getting too much for the
system. Having to field endless complaints about people being in the "wrong"
county can't help either.

In message , at 15:20:46 on Mon, 2 Aug
2010, Tim Roll-Pickering remarked:

Having to field endless complaints about people being in the "wrong"
county can't help either.

That's a self-inflicted injury because of the way they encourage other
(non-Post Office) people to use the database as a way of defining the
hinterland of where people live. As a result, it has a huge number of
false positives and negatives, and simply deleting some of the database
it not necessarily going to help very much.
--
Roland Perry