Geographic Areas Census Geography and Postcodes enable the capture of statistics and the grouping of addresses. With the exception of postcodes, most of these areas are designed for use in the census, these are used to group population and other statistics into comparable areas which are essential to those who have to plan and allocate resources.

Geographic Areas and Census Geography, Output Area (OA), Lower Super Output Area (LSOA) and Middle Super Output Area (MSOA) continue to be used to release new datasets long after the census has been completed, as such they are very useful for data modelling and grouping purposes. Each of these fit within the other, ie. MSOAs contains LSOAs and LSOAs contian OAs.

We have supressed any OAs which do not link to a Postcode of which there are approximately 200 across the UK.

Postcodes are more useful for marketing purposes and are a good way of joining an address to a location for analysis and comparison purposes.

Note: In Scotland the equivalent to LSOAs are referred to as Datazones and MSOA as Intermediate Zones. In Northern Ireland LSOAs are referred to as SOAs.