Official Statistics

Rural geographies

A guide to rural geography and defining other geographies as rural.

• From: Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs and The Rt Hon Lord Benyon
• Published: 24 March 2011

Applies to England

Documents

Census Geography

PDF, 70.2 KB, 1 page

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Local Authority Geography

PDF, 48.2 KB, 1 page

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Classification of Primary Care Organisations

MS Excel Spreadsheet, 36.5 KB

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Classification of Parliamentary Constituencies

MS Excel Spreadsheet, 167 KB

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Methodology for Classifying Parliamentary Constituencies

PDF, 357 KB, 6 pages

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Classification of Higher Geographies

MS Excel Spreadsheet, 104 KB

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Classification of NUTS3 areas

MS Excel Spreadsheet, 38 KB

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Details

There are two ways of classifying areas as rural or urban. The preferred approach is to use the rural urban definition, which is applied to census geographies.

Where information is not available at this level, the rural urban classification is applied to larger geographies such as councils, parliamentary constituencies and counties.

There are a number of other geographies to which a rural urban classification has been applied. These broadly use the same methodology as that which underpins the local council rural urban classification, based on the proportion of people living in rural settlements and large market towns and the number of people living in urban areas.

There are rural urban classifications available for Primary Care Organisations, parliamentary constituencies, NUTS3 statistical territories and a range of higher geographies including police, fire and waste authorities, counties and National Parks.

For further information please contact:
rural.statistics@defra.gsi.gov.uk
Twitter@DefraStats Defra Helpline: 08459 33 55 77 (Monday to Friday: 8am to 6pm)

Published 24 March 2011