Dataset: Alternative Claimant Count - On Flows
Field: Westminster Parliamentary Constituency geographies through to United Kingdom
Description
There are many different geographical breakdowns available, some of which are made up of smaller geography types. For example regions build up exactly into countries.
The Westminster Parliamentary Constituency hierarchy is built up from Westminster Parliamentary Constituency to the National Level based on the address of the claimant. Intermediate geographies nest within this hierarchical structure, with Westminster Parliamentary Constituency building to Region, Region to Country etc.
Available breakdowns within this hierarchy are Westminster Parliamentary Constituency, Region, Country and the National level (UK).
Quality Statement
Residency based geographies are derived from address information as recorded on the Customer Information System (CIS). CIS is a more reliable source of addresses as it links to all of the DWP benefit systems and contains the most up to date address for each individual.
These addresses are then put through a data cleansing procedure which makes sure postcodes are formatted correctly and the address fields are populated correctly. 2011 COAs are then assigned to claimants using the ONSPD (ONS Postcode Directory), starting with a direct postcode to COA lookup and then working through a logical allocation routine. These COAs are then used to merge on higher level geographies from the National Statistics Postcode Look-Up (NSPL).
This file is then matched to the data, ensuring that the date of decision is between the address start and end of dates. If no known address can be matched for a period of time, the closest address for that claimant is used, as this is more accurate than random allocation. There may still be a very small number of records that are still recorded as unknown.