Representative
About
The ONS is keen to establish a long term, small area geography policy which will be used for Census 2011 and Neighbourhood Statistics. The aim is to support the production of coherent and useful data that can be used with confidence by all organisations.
The consultation paper is available online. This describes all policy proposals, the background to them, and a number of attendant issues. Please take the time to get involved by responding to the survey and joining in the debate around the blog posts.
Latest Posts
- The consultation has now closed .........
- Consultation period ends this Friday (16th Feb)
- Do you use Output Areas?
- Don't forget the surveys
- How important are postcodes?
- Should boundaries be tied to the real world?
- Festive messages
- Health data? Ethnicity data? Do we need bigger areas?
- Consultation document
- OAs and SOAs - Stick or Twist?
No need for postcodes anymore
Posted by Anonymous (not verified) on 24/01/2007 - 11:19
Postcode data is innacurate when drawn on maps, and has little value other than to aggregate statistics to local geographic areas. Depending upon the size of the postcode area, these statistics are then incomparable. Ultimately, postcodes were designed to aid the delivery of post - not the analysis of small area data therefore it was always going to be unfit for purpose.
As for geo-referencing, I use XY data which is highly accurate and thus eliminates the innacuracies that I would encounter using postcodes. There should be a greater emphasis on using XY references rather than the now highly outdated postcode / postcode centroid system. This emphasis should be directed towards the data custodians who collect data in the first place. For example, all addresses we deal with are verified with the LLPG, if they don't match to a property then work is carried out to physically locate it's reference.
The NLPG should do this - that's if it ever works. A shame then, that other developed (and none developed countries) seem to be better at that than we do.
In answer to your question - we are already independently looking beyond the postcode as we have chosen to use the most accurate referencing available (XY LLPG matching).
The ONS should disregard postcode data in favour of geographically independent boundaries. No effort should be placed on postcodes as it would be a waste of time and resources catering for a system that has long since had it's day in the world of local area spatial-statistics.