Dataset: People on Universal Credit
Field: Westminster Parliamentary Constituency geographies
Westminster Parliamentary Constituency 2010
Following the 2023 boundary review, the latest boundaries became operative following the 2024 General Election. These boundaries replaced the existing boundaries that had been in operation since the 2010 General Election.
These will be updated in Stat Xplore from July 2024 onwards in line with the statistical series' release schedule. Latest boundaries will be named "Westminster Parliamentary Constituency 2024" and the historic boundaries will be renamed "Westminster Parliamentary Constituency 2010".
For those series that have not yet been updated, Stat Xplore will still report "Westminster Parliamentary Constituency" reflecting boundaries at 2010.
We welcome users feedback on maintaining the Westminster Parliamentary Constituency 2010 boundaries following the complete rollout of the new 2024 boundaries - contact: Stat.Xplore@dwp.gov.uk
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 Census Output Area 2011 (COA) hierarchy is built up from COA to the National Level based on the address of the claimant.
Available breakdowns within this hierarchy are Westminster Parliamentary Constituency 2010, Region, Country and the National level (GB).
Classification
Applicable to: all GB claimants.
Total number of categories within GB (excluding Unknown or missing):
By Country: 3
By Region: 11
Westminster Parliamentary Constituency 2010: 632
A full list of codes and names relating to Westminster Parliamentary Constituency areas can be obtained from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) website here.
We classify Unknown / Missing as ZZXXXXXXX and Abroad as XXZZZZZZZ
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).
All higher level geographies (Lower Layer Super Output Area/Data Zone, Middle Layer Super Output Area/Intermediate Zone, Local Authority, Region, Country) are derived from COA.