Own Software Writers Group

‹‹ Forum

• National Insurance Number in XML (13 posts)

• Darren Rayneau said 9 months, 3 weeks ago:

  Has anyone tried returning a National Insurance number that has a SPACE as the last character?

  It seems that the LIS removes the SPACE and then generates an ILR error – (rule name: NINumber_01).

  Darren.

• Caspar Verney said 9 months, 3 weeks ago:

  Interestingly the email alert version that I received of the above posting includes the word space, but the online version has omitted that word, presumably because it was wrapped in characters it does not recognise. Can anyone who controls these blog postings help/correct this issue, please?

  With regard to your question about returning an NINo with a space at the end, no I have not tried this because I have set the NINo field length to be 9 characters and thus it must be filled or it will be wrong anyway (ie 8 characters plus space is wrong anyway and you cannot eneter more than 9 characters, so it does not arise).

  Thanks,
  Caspar

• Darren Rayneau said 9 months, 3 weeks ago:

  Thanks for your reply.

  THe ILR manual for 2011/12 states that the following regarding the format of a National Insurance Number.

  "The first character of the NI number must not be D, F, I, Q, U or V, the second character must not be D, F, I, O, Q, U or V, characters 3 to 8 must be numeric and character 9 must be A, B, C, D or SPACE, if the NI number is entered"

  this states that the 9th character of an NI number could be a space. Interestingly though the HMRC website doesnt mention a space at the end of an NI number.

  Darren

• martinwest said 9 months, 3 weeks ago:

  For info
  A space is allowed for in the Data Standards Catalogue as of release 2.1 Personal Identifiers 2002. The schema below confirms that a space is acceptable although I have never come across it being used.

  The ILR was changed in 2002 to this format.

• martinwest said 9 months, 3 weeks ago:

  Try again to format the pattern value
  it should read
  [A-CEGHJ-NOPR-TW-Z]{2}[0-9]{6}[ABCDs]{1}

• Darren Rayneau said 9 months, 3 weeks ago:

  Hi

  We validate the national insurance number (which allows for a space) using the following pattern value:

  [A-C,E,G,H,J-P,R-T,W-Z][A-C,E,G,H,J-N,P,R-T,W-Z][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][A,B,C,D, ]
  (note: that in your example above the letter O would be accepted as the second character, which is not allowed).

  The issue that we are having is that when we import a student into LIS that has a national insurance number with a space on the end (the 9th character), the LIS software removes the space automatically and therefore makes the NI number invalid.

  It probably is rare to have a student with a space on the end of their national insurance number, but we seem to have one.

  Darren.

• martinwest said 9 months, 3 weeks ago:

  Hi Darren,

  The example was from the standards catalogue, to fully validate an NI number you need to check against the Valid National Insurance Number Prefixes combinations as issued by HRMC in the ‘NI GUIDANCE FOR SOFTWARE DEVELOPERS’ which does state that last character can be a space.

  You are correct in that the LIS should accept a space.

  Martin

• Caspar Verney said 9 months, 2 weeks ago:

  It seems that I have been lucky in not seeing an email address with a space at the end of it, but I see from the above discussion that it is perfectly possible and valid.

  I have tested a learner through LIS in that format and it does indeed fail for me too. Has this been reported to the LIS development team? Will the fix be in the new Beta version due out today?

  Many thanks,
  Caspar

• Caspar Verney said 9 months, 2 weeks ago:

  I have just noticed that in my previous post I said "email address" when I meant "NI Number with a space at the end of it"

  Sorry for being such an idiot!

  Caspar

• Caspar Verney said 9 months, 2 weeks ago:

  Having just got back from the Own Software Writers' meeting at Coventry, I have been told that if you substitute the space at the end of an NI Number with a zero then it will go through and work fine – apparently this is an undocumented "feature" !!!

  Caspar

• Darren Rayneau said 9 months, 1 week ago:

  Hi Casper.

  Thanks for your response. Unfortunately putting a 'zero' at the end of the national insurance number comes up with an ILR error in the LIS software.

  Darren.

• Lee Richardson said 9 months, 1 week ago:

  Hi Guys,

  I've got three learners with NI number which are falling into this trap (space at the end). I will stop trying to fix my (valid) data now I wish I had come here first )

  Cheers,

  Lee.

• Caspar Verney said 8 months, 1 week ago:

  I have been testing LIS 19.01 Beta v1.08 this week and this issue with NINo's with a blank at the end appears to be resolved as I could get it to work.

  Many thanks,
  Caspar