UK Area Figures Case Study

The Business Problem

The earlier maps used boundaries from a general-purpose source, in which wards didn't fit neatly inside their districts and left gaps of one to two per cent. They also had no figures attached, so a map could show where an area was but not who lived there or how deprived it was.

Deprivation is especially awkward across the UK. England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland each publish their own index, measured differently, so a decile in one nation can't be compared with a decile in another.

The Solution

wildesoft.net rebuilt the map on the official Office for National Statistics (ONS) boundaries, covering 4 countries, 9 English regions, 218 counties, 361 districts and over 8,400 wards. Every level now fits exactly inside the one above it, and the import checks this every time it runs.

Each area, at every level, now carries its population, its deprivation, the number of jobs in it and, where it is reliable, the median income. The figures come from ONS, National Records of Scotland and the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency, are built up from small neighbourhoods, and are checked against the official district totals before they are used.

Deprivation is shown three ways: the area's standing in its own nation's index, England's own deprivation score where it applies, and a single UK-wide figure. The UK-wide figure uses a published method from mySociety for comparing the four indices, rerun on the newest data, and was first proved by reproducing mySociety's own published results exactly.

The Result

Any area in the UK can now be shown with up-to-date, official figures, and areas can be compared fairly across the four nations. District populations agree with the official figures to within a hundredth of a per cent, and each figure is labelled with its year and source. When new statistics are published, the whole set is rebuilt from source with one run.

See all case studies for Deprivation Lens