Data Sources
Last updated: 23 September 2026
Parts of our business directory are seeded from open data published under licences that allow reuse with attribution. We combine these sources with our own research and with details provided directly by business owners. This page credits each source and links to the licence it is used under.
Open data is where a listing starts, never where it ends. Records from these sources arrive as unpublished drafts. We research each one from the business's own website and check it before it goes live — that the business is real and in our area, that the details belong to it, and that nothing private has slipped in. Plenty never do.
OpenStreetMap
Shop, service, and healthcare locations in and around Stowmarket, including addresses, contact details, and opening hours mapped by the OpenStreetMap community.
Food Standards Agency
Names and addresses of food businesses — restaurants, cafés, pubs, takeaways, and food shops — registered with Mid Suffolk and West Suffolk councils.
Care Quality Commission
Registered health and care services — GP practices, dentists, and care providers — from the CQC's public directory of locations.
Companies House
Names and trades of active companies registered in the Stowmarket area. We use this to know a business exists — nothing else from the register is republished.
Discovery only. A registered office is not a trading address, and the trades companies declare are self-declared, so we take only the name and the broad trade from here. Addresses, contact details, and opening hours are verified from the business's own website before anything is published. We do not publish director or officer details.
Contains Companies House data
Used under the Open Government Licence v3.0
Postcode locations
Where a postcode is on the map, from the ONS Postcode Directory via postcodes.io. We use it to place a business's map pin — nothing about the business itself comes from here.
Contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right 2026. Contains Royal Mail data © Royal Mail copyright and database right 2026. Source: Office for National Statistics
Used under the Open Government Licence v3.0
What we don't republish
We sometimes use other public sources — trade directories such as Checkatrade, for example — simply to learn that a business exists in the area. We don't copy their listings, ratings, reviews, or descriptions. Anything you read on a business page here comes from the open data sources above, was written by us from the business's own website or social pages, or was entered by the owner.
We also hold back some information we could publish. Food hygiene ratings are one: they are a snapshot of a single inspection on a single day, and showing them here would imply we check food safety. We don't. If you want a hygiene rating, the Food Standards Agency publishes the current one.
Corrections
Open data is a starting point, not the final word. If a listing for your business is out of date or shouldn't be here, you can claim it from its page to take over the details, or contact us at hello@stowmarket.life and we'll put it right. For how your listing came to be here and how to have it removed, see Your Listing; our Privacy Policy covers how we handle personal data.