Rural Urban Classification (2021) of Local Authority Districts (2021) in EW

Published by:
Office for National Statistics
Last updated:
09 March 2025
Topic:
Not added
Licence:
None

Summary

Rural Urban Classification

The 2021 RUC is a statistical classification to provide a consistent and standardised method for classifying geographies as rural or urban. This is based on address density, physical settlement form, population size, and Relative Access to Major towns and cities (populations of over 75,000 people). The classification is produced by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) with advice from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), the Welsh Government and colleagues from the Government Geography Profession (GGP).

This is the 2021 rural-urban classification (RUC) of the 2021 Local Authority Districts in England and Wales. This means that the 2021 RUC methodology has been applied to the 2021 LAD boundaries. LAD classifications are divided into four categories based on their populations:

<!--1.  Majority Rural: had at least 50% of their population residing in Rural OAs.

<!--2.   Intermediate Rural: 35-50% rural population

<!--3.   Intermediate Urban: 20-35% rural population

<!--4.   Urban: 20% or less of the population live in rural OAs.

Each 2021 LAD category is split into one of two Relative Access categories, using the same data as the 2021 Output Area RUC. If more than 50% of a LAD population lives in ‘nearer to a major town or city’ OAs, it is deemed ‘nearer a major town or city’; otherwise, it is classified as ‘further from a major town or city.

Where data is unavailable for Super Output Area geographies, it may be appropriate for users to undertake analysis at the LAD level. At this level, the categorisation works slightly differently in that most areas will include a mix of both rural and urban areas - so the LAD RUC categorisation is a reflection of this. A statistical geography may contain substantial portions of open countryside but still be given an ‘Urban’ classification if the majority of the population within the area live in settlements that are urban in nature. Users should take this into consideration to ensure correct interpretations of any analysis of RUC LAD categories

More from this publisher

All datasets from Office for National Statistics

Search

Data links

Link to the data Format File added Data preview
KML KML 09 March 2025 Not available
GeoJSON GEOJSON 09 March 2025 Not available
Shapefile ZIP 09 March 2025 Not available
CSV CSV 09 March 2025 Preview
ArcGIS GeoService ARCGIS GEOSERVICES REST API 09 March 2025 Not available

Additional information

View additional metadata
Harvest GUID
https://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=bbba92a2e7b5443aa6e69409006277ef&sublayer=0
Source Metadata
XML
HTML

Contact

Enquiries

Contact Office for National Statistics regarding this dataset

Freedom of Information (FOI) requests

Contact Office for National Statistics regarding this dataset