Rural Urban Herefordshire - The Herefordshire Partnership

Rural Urban Herefordshire

This is the product of a project commissioned jointly by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM), the Countryside Agency (CA) and the Welsh Assembly Government to create a new settlement-based definition of urban and rural areas.

Classification enables pooling of data to produce comparative statistics for urban and rural areas of different types.

In 2004, classifications were published for all Census Output Areas and wards in England & Wales by settlement form (urban, town and fringe, village, hamlet and dispersed) and sparsity (sparse, less sparse). For details of the classifications for Herefordshire, contact Herefordshire Council Research Team.

Subsequently, a classification of Local Authorities areas (major urban, large urban, other urban, significant rural, rural-50 and rural-80) was initiated by Defra. Herefordshire is classified as rural-50; between 50% and 80% of the local authority areas population live in a rural settlement.

An introductory guide to the methodology is available via www.statistics.gov.uk/geography/downloads/Introductory_Guide.pdf

In terms of rural/urban breakdowns in this report comparisons are made using the four categories for settlement form at an Output Area level:

• Urban
• Rural (broken down into three smaller categories)
• • Rural Town (town and fringe)
  • Rural Village
  • Rural Dispersed (hamlet and dispersed)

Herefordshire is a rural county with a large proportion of the area classified as either Rural Dispersed or Rural Village by Defra's 2004 rural/urban definition at Output Area level.

For more information about the rural/urban classification for Herefordshire, contact the Research Team on 01432 383634 or email researchteam@herefordshire.gov.uk

Rural Urban breakdown of data is available for:

• Hours worked
• Highest level of qualification obtained
• Distance travelled to work (Economic development and enterprise chapter)
• Limiting long term illness (LLTI)
• Household tenure (Safer and stronger communities chapter)
• Household composition (Safer and stronger communities chapter)
• Provision of unpaid care (Healthier communities and older people chapter)
• Access to services (Safer and stronger communities chapter)