Census Output Area (COA) Hierarchical Geographies (from COA through to National Level)

Dataset: Housing Benefit claimants

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 (COA) hierarchy is built up from COA to the National Level based on the address of the Housing Benefit claimant. Intermediate geographies nest within this hierarchical structure, with COA building to Lower Layer Super Output Area (LSOA), LSOA to Middle Layer Super Output Area (MSOA) etc. for English and Welsh geographies, and COA to Data Zone (DZ), DZ to Intermediate Zone (IZ) etc. for Scottish geographies.

Available breakdowns within this hierarchy are COA, LSOA (England and Wales) or DZ (Scotland), MSOA (England and Wales) or IZ (Scotland), Local Authority, Region, Country and the National level (GB).

Classification

Applicable to: All claimants

Total number of categories (excluding Unknown / Missing):

By Country: 3

By Region: 11

By Local Authority: 380

A full list of codes and names relating to local authority areas can be obtained from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) website here.

Quality Statement

Residency based geographies have been derived from postcode. This postcode relates to a claimant's place of residence and not the Jobcentre Plus office administering the claim.

Records are allocated a 2001 Census Output Area (COA) based on this postcode (i.e. claimant's place of residence). In a very small proportion of cases, where COA can not be assigned directly from the postcode, it is randomly assigned within the Local Authority area in which the Jobcentre Plus office administering the claim is based. There may still be a very small number of records that are still recorded as unknown because data on both the postcode and administering Jobcentre Plus office is unknown.

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.