Official Statistics

Rural geographies

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

Applies to England

Documents

Census Geography

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Local Authority Geography

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Classification of Primary Care Organisations

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Classification of Parliamentary Constituencies

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Methodology for Classifying Parliamentary Constituencies

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Classification of Higher Geographies

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Classification of NUTS3 areas

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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)

Updates to this page

Published 24 March 2011

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