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England and Wales
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About this dataset
This dataset provides Census 2021 estimates that classify usual residents aged 16 years and over in employment the week before the census in England and Wales by the distance they travelled to work. The estimates are as at Census Day, 21 March 2021.
Census 2021 took place during a period of rapid change. We gave extra guidance to help people on furlough answer the census questions about work. However, we are unable to determine how furloughed people followed the guidance. Take care when using this data for planning purposes. Read more about specific quality considerations in our https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/methodologies/traveltoworkqualityinformationforcensus2021[Labour market quality information for Census 2021 methodology].
National Park data are created by plotting unique properties as identified by their Unique Property Reference Number or postcodes into National Park boundaries current at December 2022. This differs from the OA best fit methodology used for other geographic level data.
Protecting personal data
Sometimes we need to make changes to data if it is possible to identify individuals. This is known as statistical disclosure control. In Census 2021, we:
- Swapped records (targeted record swapping), for example, if a household was likely to be identified in datasets because it has unusual characteristics, we swapped the record with a similar one from a nearby small area. Very unusual households could be swapped with one in a nearby local authority.
- Added small changes to some counts (cell key perturbation), for example, we might change a count of four to a three or a five. This might make small differences between tables depending on how the data are broken down when we applied perturbation.
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About the variables
Distance travelled to work (11 categories)
Description: The distance, in kilometres, between a person's residential postcode and their workplace postcode measured in a straight line. A distance travelled of 0.1km indicates that the workplace postcode is the same as the residential postcode. Distances over 1200km are treated as invalid, and an imputed or estimated value is added.
"Work mainly at or from home" is made up of those that ticked either the 'Mainly work at or from home' box for the address of workplace question, or the "Work mainly at or from home" box for the method of travel to work question.
"Other" includes no fixed place of work, working on an offshore installation and working outside of the UK.
Distance is calculated as the straight line distance between the enumeration postcode and the workplace postcode.
Quality information: As Census 2021 was during a unique period of rapid change, take care when using this data for planning purposes.
Comparability with 2011: Not comparable. It is difficult to compare this variable with the 2011 Census because Census 2021 took place during a national lockdown. The government advice at the time was for people to work from home (if they can) and avoid public transport.
Only those who work at a workplace or depot gave their workplace address. This means that the number of people who answered this question is a significantly smaller proportion of the population than normal.
People who were on furlough (about 5.6 million), could have given details based on their patterns before or during the pandemic, or what they did during the census taking place, including Census Day.
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