BackHome pageClose
TownCentres Logo Town Centre Statistics for London CD-ROM - Caveats

When using the data on this CD-ROM, please consider the following issues:

Back Statistics

The statistics presented in this CD-ROM should be viewed as being provisional and will be revised when the first national statistics become available in 2003. The key reason why this is the case is that the floorspace and employment data used to drive the model are not concurrent - the employment and turnover data are for 1999, while the floorspace data are as at 2000. When the model is run across the whole country, it will be done using employment data as at 2000.

Additionally, the employment, turnover and floorspace statistics used to create the boundaries and statistics are estimates and will consequently contain some level of error. This is the first time that these estimates have been published and the response to the publication will provide valuable feedback that will drive further data improvements.

Back Boundaries

The model used to generate boundaries for areas of town centre and retail activity also identified a number of smaller centres which are not included in this CD ROM. Areas smaller than 4 hectares (which included district centres and retail parks) were not included since the accuracy of postcode geo-referencing used to populate them was not sufficient, and statistics aggregated within them were prone to error.

Many of the boundaries will appear to extend beyond the high street into residential areas; this is because of the smoothing effect of the model. This will not affect the statistics since very little employment, or commercial floorspace is found within these areas.

Back Comparing Areas

Care should be taken though when comparing statistics from Retail Cores with Areas of Town Centre Activity since the retail core boundaries were generated exclusively from retail data and do not take into account other town centre activities. Thus, it would be wrong to compare King Street Retail Core (found in Hammersmith and Fulham) with nearby Greenford (which is an Area of Town Centre Activity) and not be aware that the different approaches to defining the zones may affect the statistical totals. (See help for more detail on the differences between the two types of area.)

It was not possible to identify local centres in Central London from the full town centres model (which incorporates all the different facets of the town centre) and so a trimmed down 'retail only' model was used to identify its major retail concentrations.

Back Comparing Datasets

Care should be taken when comparing the employment and floorspace data. The two datasets (from the Office for National Statistics and Valuation Office Agency respectively) are based on different definitions and years, so any ratios based on these may be subject to error. Further uncertainty is introduced because the employment numbers listed represent total employment (no attempt has been made to generate Full Time Equivalents). The Use Class data have also been modelled (since the Valuation Office do not classify floorspace in this way) and as a result, there may be errors in some of the records.

Back Disclosure

In some Areas of Town Centre Activity, data are not presented since despite aggregation, where details of individual firms or properties are disclosed.


This study was commissioned by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM) and was carried out by the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA) and URBED Disclaimer and Copyright information
Back to home page