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Special characters returned by the identity service (GOV.UK One Login)

Contents
Overview
Special characters in address fields
Special characters in name fields

Overview

This document provides an overview of the special characters returned by the identity service GOV.UK One Login for the addresses and names fields, along with their associated attributes. This will allow providers, schemes, third-party administrators and integrated service providers (ISPs) to plan accordingly when matching pension assets.

By aligning with PDP data standards and the find request schema, the find request payload will include any special characters provided by the identity service.

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Special characters in address fields

  • Sample regex: /^[a-zA-Z0-9 .,\-\\\/'';]$/gm
  • Numbers: 0-9
  • Letters: a-z, A-Z (uppercase and lowercase letters)
  • Special characters:
    • . (period)
    • , (comma)
    • - (hyphen)
    • \ (backslash)
    • / (forward slash)
    • * (asterisk)
    • ' (apostrophe)
    • “ (double quotation mark)
    • ; (semicolon)
    • (empty space)

Address fields

Please note that any of the allowed characters listed above may apply to any of the following address fields:

  • addressLine1
  • addressLine2
  • addressLine3
  • addressLine4
  • addressLine5
  • postcode
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Special characters in name fields

  • Sample regex: /^[A-Z0-9 .'-]*$/gm
  • Numbers: 0-9
  • Letters: A-Z (uppercase letters)
  • Special characters:
    • . (period)
    • ' (apostrophe)
    • - (hyphen)
    • (empty space)
  • Names will be presented in UPPERCASE as per International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) standards.
  • No single names (both given name and surname must be present).
  • All names, will only contain Latin characters without diacritics.
    • In letter translation, the ‘least letter transliteration’ is followed. For example, 'Ä' is transliterated as A. Therefore, the German name 'Müller Gößmann' would be returned as ‘MULLER GOSSMANN’.
    • For more information on transliteration, please refer to table 'TRANSLITERATIONS RECOMMENDED FOR USE BY STATES' on page 24 of the ICAO documentation for Machine Readable Travel Documents (Doc 9303).

Names with hyphens or apostrophes

Where a name is hyphenated or contains an apostrophe, this could be returned:

  • with the hyphen or apostrophe replaced with a space
  • with the hyphen or apostrophe removed
  • in a regular format or concatenated

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