Geographies
Geographies & boundaries
About geographies
Official figures are always published for a set of areas: a council's figures for each local authority, a census table for each small neighbourhood, an election result for each constituency. The lines around those areas are boundaries, and a map can only colour in the areas its data was published for.
Each area has a nine-character code from the Office for National Statistics, such as E08000003 for Manchester, which stays the same as long as the area does. Boundaries are redrawn from time to time, when councils merge or wards are reviewed, so the Atlas keeps several releases of each and matches every dataset to the boundaries its figures were published on.
Because boundaries move, an area's figures from different releases aren't always about the same place. To compare them, or to add small areas up into larger ones, the Atlas connects each set of areas to the others: which areas sit inside which, which replaced which, and how much those that don't nest overlap. The API calls these crosswalks.
All geographies
Councils and regions
Countries
England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
The UK is made up of four nations. Many datasets are published for only some of them, because health, education, housing and other services are run separately in each, and each has its own statistics office.
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No datasets in the Atlas are published on these areas yet.
Regions
The nine regions of England, such as the North West and London. Many national statistics are summarised at this level.
Regions have no elected government of their own, apart from London with its mayor and assembly. They're mainly used to summarise statistics between the national and local level. Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are usually shown alongside them as equivalents.
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No datasets in the Atlas are published on these areas yet.
Counties and unitary authorities
The upper tier of local government: county councils, unitary authorities, and metropolitan and London boroughs.
In two-tier parts of England, a county council runs services such as schools, social care and roads, while smaller district councils handle bins, housing and planning. Elsewhere a single unitary authority does both. This geography lists the upper tier: one area for each county or unitary council.
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No datasets in the Atlas are published on these areas yet.
Local authorities
Local authority districts, the councils that run local services, such as Leeds, Cornwall or Glasgow City. They're the most common geography for official statistics, and most data in the Atlas is published on them.
Each local authority district has an elected council responsible for local services. In two-tier areas these are the district councils, in the rest of England they're unitary authorities and metropolitan or London boroughs, and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own single-tier councils. Boundaries change from time to time as councils merge, so the Atlas holds several releases.
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Datasets on these areas: Adult social care activity in England, Adult Social Care Outcomes Framework, England, Air Quality, EU Referendum Results, Broadband Coverage, UK business: activity, size and location, Car Availability, Child Poverty, Claimant Count, Council Tax levels in England, Crime, Public electric vehicle chargers by local authority, Subnational electricity consumption, Ethnicity, Subnational gas consumption, Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Temporary Accommodation, House price to residence-based earnings ratio, Income, Jobs, Land Area, Life Expectancy, Life Expectancy Series, Local authority revenue expenditure and financing, Mobile Coverage, Housing supply: net additional dwellings, NHS Waiting Times, Planning applications in England, Population (Local Authority), Qualifications, Road Collisions by Local Authority, School Performance (KS4), Attainment 8 Gap, Travel to Work, Unemployment, Local authority collected waste management, Workplace income
Combined authorities
Groups of English councils that work together under a mayor or a combined county authority, such as Greater Manchester or the West Midlands.
A combined authority takes on powers devolved from central government, often over transport, skills and economic development, while the councils within it carry on running everyday services. Most are led by an elected mayor.
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No datasets in the Atlas are published on these areas yet.
Parishes
Civil parishes and Welsh communities, the smallest tier of local government, together with the unparished areas between them, so they cover England and Wales completely.
Parish and town councils look after very local matters, such as allotments, village halls and play areas, and are consulted on planning. In Wales the equivalent bodies are community councils. Not every part of England has one; the areas without are counted here as unparished.
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No datasets in the Atlas are published on these areas yet.
Local planning authorities
The bodies that decide planning applications. Mostly councils, but also national park authorities and development corporations.
Anyone applying to build or change a building applies to their local planning authority. Inside a national park, the park authority decides applications instead of the council, which is why these areas differ from council boundaries.
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No datasets in the Atlas are published on these areas yet.
National parks
The fifteen national parks of England, Wales and Scotland.
National parks protect landscapes of special beauty and wildlife. Each has its own authority that looks after the landscape and acts as the planning authority within its boundary.
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No datasets in the Atlas are published on these areas yet.
Elections
Westminster constituencies
The areas that each elect a Member of Parliament to the House of Commons. The Atlas holds release history from 2015, including boundaries from before and after the 2024 general-election redraw.
Each constituency elects one MP. Boundaries are reviewed periodically so that constituencies hold similar numbers of voters, most recently for the 2024 general election, when almost every constituency changed. Results from different boundary sets can't be compared seat by seat.
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Datasets on these areas: EU Referendum Results (Constituency Estimates), General Election Results, General Election Results, 1918-2019, Population (Constituency), School Performance (KS4, Constituency)
Wards
Electoral wards, the areas that elect local councillors. They're redrawn often, so the Atlas holds a range of historical releases from 2011 onward.
Wards are the building blocks of local elections: each elects one or more councillors to its local authority. With several thousand across the UK, they're also small enough to show variation within a town or city, so the Atlas uses them for house prices, population and local election results.
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Datasets on these areas: House Prices, Local Election Results, Population
County electoral divisions
The areas English county councils are elected by, the county council equivalent of wards.
County councils in two-tier areas of England don't use district wards for their elections. They draw their own, larger, divisions, each electing one or two county councillors.
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No datasets in the Atlas are published on these areas yet.
Scottish Parliament constituencies
The 73 constituencies that each elect a member of the Scottish Parliament.
Scottish Parliament elections give each voter two votes. The first elects a constituency member by first past the post, much like a Westminster election.
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No datasets in the Atlas are published on these areas yet.
Scottish Parliament regions
The eight regions that elect the Scottish Parliament's additional members.
The second vote in a Scottish Parliament election is for a party in the voter's region. Seven additional members are elected from each region to make the overall result more proportional.
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No datasets in the Atlas are published on these areas yet.
Senedd constituencies
The 40 constituencies that each elect a member of the Senedd, the Welsh Parliament.
Until 2026, Senedd elections, like the Scottish Parliament's, combined constituency members elected by first past the post with regional members. From the 2026 election, Wales uses 16 larger constituencies that each elect six members by proportional representation.
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No datasets in the Atlas are published on these areas yet.
Senedd regions
The five regions that elect the Senedd's additional members.
Each Senedd region elected four additional members, balancing the constituency results to make the overall make-up of the Senedd more proportional. Regions were abolished for the 2026 election.
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No datasets in the Atlas are published on these areas yet.
Statistical areas
Output areas
The smallest areas census statistics are published for in England and Wales, of around 100 to 625 people. LSOAs are built from them.
Output areas were designed for the census, grouping neighbouring households so that statistics can be published in fine detail without identifying anyone. There are around 190,000 in England and Wales.
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No datasets in the Atlas are published on these areas yet.
Lower layer super output areas (LSOAs)
Small neighbourhoods of around 1,000 to 3,000 people in England and Wales, designed for statistics. Deprivation indices and other small-area data are published on them.
LSOA stands for lower layer super output area. They're groups of four or five output areas drawn by the Office for National Statistics to be similar in population, about 1,500 people each, and to change as little as possible between censuses. That makes them the go-to areas for comparing small neighbourhoods, and they're the areas the English and Welsh deprivation indices rank. There are about 35,000 in England and Wales.
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Datasets on these areas: Fuel Poverty, Indices of Multiple Deprivation, Welsh Index of Multiple Deprivation
Middle layer super output areas (MSOAs)
Areas of around 5,000 to 15,000 people in England and Wales, built from LSOAs and sitting between them and local authorities.
MSOA stands for middle layer super output area. Each is made up of a handful of LSOAs, averaging around 8,000 people, so they work well for data that would be too sparse or too sensitive at LSOA level, such as household income estimates. There are about 7,300 in England and Wales.
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No datasets in the Atlas are published on these areas yet.
Data zones
Scotland's small areas for statistics, similar to LSOAs in England and Wales. The Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation is published on them.
Data zones have roughly 500 to 1,000 residents each, and there are around 7,000 across Scotland. They're Scotland's equivalent of LSOAs, so they're the areas to look at for neighbourhood-level statistics in Scotland.
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Datasets on these areas: Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation
Intermediate zones
Scottish areas of around 2,500 to 6,000 people, built from data zones and sitting between them and council areas, much like MSOAs in England and Wales.
Intermediate zones group data zones together for statistics that are too sparse to publish for individual data zones. There are around 1,300 across Scotland.
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No datasets in the Atlas are published on these areas yet.
Northern Ireland super output areas
Northern Ireland's small areas for statistics. The Northern Ireland Multiple Deprivation Measure is published on them.
Super output areas in Northern Ireland are built from smaller areas and play the same role as LSOAs in England and Wales: small, stable areas of similar population for publishing neighbourhood statistics.
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Datasets on these areas: Northern Ireland Multiple Deprivation Measure
ITL1 regions
The top tier of International Territorial Levels, used for regional economic statistics: the nine English regions plus Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
International Territorial Levels, or ITLs, are the UK's system of statistical regions for comparing economies, which replaced the EU's NUTS regions after Brexit. The ITL1 level is the broadest of three.
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Datasets on these areas: Regional gross domestic product: ITL1 regions
ITL2 areas
The middle tier of International Territorial Levels, used for regional economic statistics.
ITL2 areas are mostly counties, groups of counties or city regions, such as Greater Manchester or Devon. There are 46 of them.
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Datasets on these areas: Regional gross domestic product: ITL2 regions
ITL3 areas
The most detailed tier of International Territorial Levels, where regional GDP and productivity are published.
ITL3 areas are mostly single local authorities or small groups of them. There are 182, and they're the most detailed level at which regional GDP is published.
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Datasets on these areas: Regional gross domestic product: ITL3 regions
Travel to work areas
Areas where most residents also work, drawn from commuting patterns rather than administrative lines. They're a good approximation of local labour markets.
Travel to work areas are drawn so that at least three quarters of the people who live in an area also work there, and the other way round. They cross council and county lines wherever commuting does, so they show real local job markets better than administrative areas.
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No datasets in the Atlas are published on these areas yet.
Major towns and cities
The built-up extents of the largest towns and cities in England and Wales. Useful for giving a map context, rather than for joining data to.
These boundaries show where the largest towns and cities actually are on the map, rather than the council areas that contain them, which can include large rural areas.
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No datasets in the Atlas are published on these areas yet.
Health, police and fire
Integrated care boards
The NHS bodies that plan health services across England. NHS waiting times are reported on them.
Integrated care boards replaced clinical commissioning groups in 2022. Each one plans and pays for NHS services, such as hospitals and GP surgeries, across its part of England, working with local councils on social care.
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No datasets in the Atlas are published on these areas yet.
Sub-ICB locations
The areas within each integrated care board, which took over from clinical commissioning groups.
Sub-ICB locations follow the boundaries of the old clinical commissioning groups, so they let NHS statistics be compared with earlier years at a more local level than a whole integrated care board.
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No datasets in the Atlas are published on these areas yet.
NHS England regions
The seven regions NHS England is organised into, above the integrated care boards.
NHS England oversees the health service through seven regional teams, each covering several integrated care boards.
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No datasets in the Atlas are published on these areas yet.
Welsh local health boards
The seven boards that plan and deliver NHS services in Wales.
NHS Wales is organised into seven local health boards, each responsible for hospitals, GPs and community health services across its area.
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No datasets in the Atlas are published on these areas yet.
Police force areas
The 43 territorial police forces of England and Wales.
Each police force area has its own chief constable and an elected police and crime commissioner, or a mayor in some areas, who sets its priorities and budget. Scotland and Northern Ireland each have a single national police service.
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No datasets in the Atlas are published on these areas yet.
Community safety partnerships
Local partnerships of councils, police and other services that tackle crime. Police recorded crime is published on them, so they're the geography for the Atlas's crime data.
Every local authority in England and Wales has a community safety partnership, so their boundaries mostly match council areas. Police recorded crime is published on them, which is how the Atlas shows crime by council.
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No datasets in the Atlas are published on these areas yet.
Fire and rescue authorities
The 47 fire and rescue services of England and Wales.
Fire and rescue authorities run the fire service for one or more council areas. Some are part of a county council, some are standalone bodies, and in some places the police and crime commissioner or mayor runs them.
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No datasets in the Atlas are published on these areas yet.
Postcodes and places
Not every way of describing where something is comes with official boundaries. Postcodes and counties are how most people say where they live, so the Atlas works out which of the areas above they fall in.
Postcodes
Royal Mail draws up postcodes to deliver post, not to publish statistics. A full postcode, such as M1 1AE, covers around 15 addresses on average. Its first half is the postcode district (M1), which belongs to a postcode area (M).
Postcodes don't have official boundaries. The Office for National Statistics publishes a single point for each one, roughly at the middle of its addresses, and the Atlas finds the areas that point falls in. A postcode near the edge of a ward or LSOA can have addresses on both sides, so the answer is the area its point falls in, and the API flags postcodes close to a boundary. Northern Ireland postcodes aren't available, because of licensing restrictions.
get/postcodes/{postcode}Find a postcode's areasCounties and named places
When people say "Kent" or "Lancashire", they usually mean a ceremonial county, the county a lord-lieutenant is appointed to, rather than the county council. Ceremonial counties take in the unitary authorities inside them, such as Medway in Kent or Blackpool in Lancashire, and have no official statistics code of their own. The Atlas also holds the historic counties of around 1888, and groupings like North Wales that have no official status at all.
Official statistics are published for councils rather than these counties, so the Atlas builds each one from the local authorities inside it. A council is counted in the county holding most of its area, so the edges follow council lines rather than the county's own. Scotland's lieutenancy areas don't follow council lines, so they aren't included.
get/locationsList named locations