A sort code is the name given by both the British and Irish banking industry to the bank codes which are used to route money transfers between banks within their respective countries via their respective clearance organisations. For a quick search the side bar contains the main search tool. The first one or two digits identify the bank with the rest of the sortode identifying the branch an ccount is held.
IBAN imposes a flexible but regular format sufficient for account identification and contains validation information to avoid errors of transcription.