Output Area Sizes
What are the Output Area Sizes
Output areas 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 fits within the other, ie. MSOAs contain LSOAs and LSOAs contain OAs.
We have suppressed any OAs which do not link to a Postcode of which there are approximately 200 across the UK.
| Geography | Min Population | Max Population | Min Household | Max Household | England | Wales | Scotland | NI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Output Area (OA) | 100 | 625 | 40 | 250 | 171,372 | 10,036 | 42,604 | 5,022 |
| Lower Super Output Area (LOSA) | 1,000 | 3,000 | 400 | 1,200 | 32,844 | 1,909 | 6,976 | 890 |
| Middle Super Output Area (MSOA) | 5,000 | 15,000 | 2,000 | 6,000 | 6,791 | 410 | 1,279 | – |
As a postcode can contain 1 address or 100 they are more suited for marketing purposes, this is the best way of joining an address to a location for analysis and comparison purposes.
- Glossary: Rural and Urban Postcode ClassificationsRural and Urban Postcode Classifications assign all areas in the UK to one of six rural, or four urban, settlement or context types.