Rural Urban (13 categories)

This classification can only be used with the following geographies:

• Country
• Region
• Local Authority: District / Unitary
• Local Authority: County / Unitary

This classification allows summary outputs to be produced by rural-urban type at local authority, region and country level (it will not work with other geography types).

The outputs are based on a rural-urban classification of output areas. The 2011 classification is a revised version of the one created after the 2001 Census with additional detail in the urban domain.

Output areas are treated as urban if they were allocated to a 2011 built-up area with a population of 10,000 or more people. The urban domain is sub-divided into three broad morphological types based on the predominant settlement component. As with the previous version of the classification, the remaining rural output areas are grouped into three broad morphological types based on the predominant settlement component.

The classification also categorises output areas based on context - i.e. whether the wider surrounding area of a given output area is sparsely populated or less sparsely populated.

For more details see the https://www.ons.gov.uk/file?uri=/methodology/geography/geographicalproducts/ruralurbanclassifications/2011ruralurbanclassification/ruralurbanclassification2011userguide.zip[Rural-Urban Classification 2011 User Guide] (1.5 MB zip).

Variable (8 categories)

Sex is the classification of a person as either male or female.

A household is defined as: * one person living alone, or * a group of people (not necessarily related) living at the same address who share cooking facilities and share a living room or sitting room or dining area. This includes: * sheltered accommodation units in an establishment where 50 per cent or more have their own kitchens (irrespective of whether there are other communal facilities), and * all people living in caravans on any type of site that is their usual residence. This will include anyone who has no other usual residence elsewhere in the UK. A household must contain at least one person whose place of usual residence is at the address. A group of short-term residents living together is not classified as a household, and neither is a group of people at an address where only visitors are staying.

A communal establishment is an establishment providing managed residential accommodation. 'Managed' in this context means full-time or part-time supervision of the accommodation. Types of communal establishment include: * Sheltered accommodation units where fewer than 50 per cent of the units in the establishment have their own cooking facilities, or similar accommodation where residents have their own rooms, but the main meal is provided. If half or more possess their own facilities for cooking (regardless of use) all units in the whole establishment are treated as separate households. * Small hotels, guest houses, bed & breakfasts and inns and pubs with residential accommodation with room for 10 or more guests (excluding the owner/manager and his/her family). * All accommodation provided solely for students (during term-time). This includes university-owned cluster flats, houses and apartments located within student villages, and similar accommodation owned by a private company and provided solely for students (University owned student houses that were difficult to identify and not clearly located with other student residences are treated as households, and houses rented to students by private landlords are also treated as households). Accommodation available only to students may include a small number of care-taking or maintenance staff, or academic staff. * Accommodation available only to nurses. This includes cluster flats and similar accommodation, provided solely for nurses. Nurses' accommodation on a hospital site that does not also contain patients is treated as a separate communal establishment from the hospital (and not categorised as a hospital), so that nurses are treated as 'residents' and not 'resident staff' or 'patients'. This ensures consistency with similar nurses' accommodation not on a hospital site.

Schoolchildren and students in full-time education studying away from their family home are treated as usually resident at their term-time address. Basic demographic information only (name, sex, age, marital status and relationship) is collected at their non term-time address (their 'home' or 'vacation' address). The information on families, household size and household composition for their non term-time address does not include them.

For area measurements, census statistics use Standard Area Measurements (SAM), created by ONS Geography for key geographies in the UK using standard methodologies. SAMs are land measurement figures defined by topographic boundaries (coastline and inland water) as at the end of 2011. Area measurements are in hectares - the metric unit of area defined as 10,000 square metres or approximately 2.47 acres - there are 100 hectares in 1 km2. Each area measurement used in census results is calculated by aggregating the SAM (measured to two decimal places) for each output area that has been best-fitted to each higher area.