Rural Urban Classification (2011) of Wards in England and Wales

<span style='font-family: &quot;Avenir Next W01&quot;, &quot;Avenir Next W00&quot;, &quot;Avenir Next&quot;, Avenir, &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;, sans-serif; font-size: 17px;'>This file provides a rural-urban view of 2011 electoral wards / divisions. The 2011 rural-urban classification of electoral wards / divisions was released in August 2013. This product was sponsored by a cross-Government working group comprising Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Department of the Communities and Local Government, Office for National Statistics and the Welsh Government. The classification at electoral wards / divisions level is built from the RUC at OA level (the most detailed version of the classification). Assignments of electoral wards / divisions to urban or rural categories are made by reference to the category to which the majority of their constituent OA are assigned. In the RUC at OA level, output areas are treated as ‘urban’ if they were allocated to a 2011 built-up area with a population of 10,000 or more. The urban domain is then further sub-divided into three broad morphological types based on the predominant settlement component. As with the previous version of the classification, the remaining ‘rural’ output areas are grouped into three broad morphological types based on the predominant settlement component. At the electoral wards / divisions scale settlement form is less homogeneous than at OA level and so there are just two rural settlement types. The classification also categorises output areas based on context – i.e. whether the wider surrounding area of a given output area is sparsely populated or less sparsely populated (File Size 429KB).</span>