BURISA News Issue 192

BURISA
June 2012
192
The British Urban & Regional Information Systems Association
The Future of BURISA
Reader!s views sought
In recent months it has become clear
that BURISA cannot continue in its
current form for very much longer. The
number of subscribers has fallen
substantially in recent years and this has
had a corresponding effect on our bank
balance. We have already reduced our
costs by producing the newsletter in
electronic form only but we cannot now
survive much beyond the end of 2012
without a dramatic and unexpected
improvement in our circumstances.
BURISA has usually relied on the
annual conference as a key source of
income, but fewer subscribers and a
general squeeze on training and other
budgets meant that only very tight cost
control on the 2011 and 2010
conferences prevented them from
repeating the substantial loss made in
2009. A 2012 conference is likely to
suffer from a similar climate, if not
more so, and there is a general feeling
amongst the Board that the only way of
ensuring we do not make a loss, is not to
hold a conference at all.
More financial details can be found in
the annual statements of accounts
available on the BURISA website.
The Board has discussed possible
reasons for the decline in subscribers.
The likely causes have been the effects
of the recent financial climate, a general
move to free web-based publishing,
changes in professional interests and
more work pressures resulting in less
time for activities like BURISA. The
Board has also considered possible
solutions, but it is now clear that if
BURISA is to continue, it will have to
be in a different form. One option is to
merge with another organisation with
similar or complementary interests. We
are pursuing this now and hope that it
may be possible to report more in our
next issue.
We would also like to take this
opportunity to invite readers to make
any other proposals that could give
BURISA a future. These will almost
certainly require further cost reductions
and the main saving that can still be
made is by reverting from a paid to an
honorary editor. This might enable the
Association to reconsider its
subscription charges which could then
be followed by a drive to rebuild the
readership base. The Board would be
delighted to hear from any individuals
or group of individuals who feel they
could take this on, possibly in
conjunction with an academic or
professional institution. Please contact
the Chair before the next Board Meeting
on 15th June.
If no realistic alternative proposals
emerge in the coming months, the
overall consensus on the Board is to
bow out with dignity and be proud of
what BURISA has achieved during its
40 years in existence. In that case the
Association would be wound up as soon
as practicable after the end of 2012,
with any remaining funds being
distributed to one or more appropriate
organisations in accordance with our
constitution.
Whatever the future for BURISA,
newsletters will continue to be produced
until December 2012, when current
subscriptions end. We would also seek
to find ways to maintain access to our
archive of newsletters and conference
material. Newsletters have been sent to
the British Library which maintains an
archive of all UK publications. We will
keep the www.burisa.org.uk site in
existence for a further eighteen months
and would also investigate other web
hosts for our archive. Again,
suggestions would be welcome.
Please contact the Chair, Mike Haslam,
at chair@burisa.org.uk with any
comments or proposals..
Contents
1 Announcement
2 Editorial; single data list
3 The future of regional statistics
4 York census conference
5 Census; Beyond 2011
7 School place planning
8 English health profiles
12 URISA - 50 years
14 Geoplace; local equality data
15 ONS neighbourhood statistics ;
AGI Geocommunity 2012
16 Regional accounts; Urban Audit
17 Rough sleeping statistics
18 BSPS Conference
19 Statsusernet ; BURISA website
20 B U R I S A a i m s ; B U R I S A
C o n t a c t s a n d B o a r d
M e m b e r s ; N o t e s f o r
Contributors
Long URLs
Long URLs which stretch over more
than one line of text are replaced
with shortened versions via:
http://Tinyurl.com/

Editorial
BURISA 192 invites readers to let the Board know
about the value of and future of the organisation as it
commemorates its 40th anniversary. The issue will be
progressed at the Board meeting in the middle of June.
Readers will be advised of any decisions directly and in
BURISA 193 in the autumn.
We have updates on the Single Data List efforts to
reduce reporting burdens without detriment to statistical
quality. BURISA 191 highlighted the DCLG
consultation on various proposed changes to statistics it
collates relating to housing, land use and regional
matters. The BURISA Board is particularly concerned at
the potential loss of regional statistics and has submitted
a response to the consultation taking account of readers
views. As well as being fed directly to DCLG
comments received have also been used in a SUF
critique of sub national statistics. A response to the
consultation from DCLG is awaited.
BURISA 192 continues the census theme of previous
issues with the latest information about dissemination of
results starting later this year and analysis capabilities. It
also updates on the consultation process “Beyond 2011”
about alternatives to a full British census in 2021.
There is advance information about relevant conferences
scheduled during the year - by BSPS AGI, RSS and
TWRI. Further information is awaited about the launch
of Ian white’s “History of the Census”. There is still the
possibility of a BURISA readers event at the RSS on
October 12th to update on current issues.
Professor John Howson contributes an article on School
Place Planning.
A major article explains the role of Health Profiles in
planning for improved health outcomes.
We publish the first part of an article from a sister
organisation - URISA based in the United States of
America, which commemorates its 50th anniverary.
There are further updates on Geoplace, Local Equality
Data and Urban Audit and Neighbourhood Statistics.
The topics of regional accounts and rough sleeping are
introduced for the first time.
The SUF user engagement website statsuserner is now
up and running - we include a note of advice on usage.
Readers are very welcome to contribute items for future
issue, particularly now on how BURISA has evolved
during its 40 years,
Happy Jubilee and Olympics!
Cedric Knipe
BURISA Editor
editor@burisa.org.uk
Single Data List – Publication of the Single Data List
for 2012-13
John Flett DCLG
Since our last update in the September issue of the
BURISA Newsletter, we published on 11 April the
Single Data List for 2012-13.
The single data list is a catalogue of all the datasets that
local government must submit to central government
and as a result of challenging departments over their
data requirements and further refinement of the list, the
number of data collections on the list has been reduced
from 193 last year to 156 this year.
As before, the list also includes an additional 8
collections by the Electoral Commission, although these
are not part of the Single Data List arrangements as the
Commission is wholly independent of government.
As part of our commitment to achieve further burden
reduction and in order regulate any new data reporting
requirements, we have developed a 'gateway' system.
This will ensure that all new data requirements from
local government will:
· Meet one or more of the criteria set out in the six data
principles document.
· Be fully funded as per new burdens procedures.
· Pass through a gateway group to ensure that the
burden associated with them is minimised.
The Single Data List, the six data principles document
and related documents can be downloaded from:
http://tinyurl.com/5tqvwe9
BURISA 192 page 2 June 2012

BURISA 191 page 3 March 2012
The future of regional statistics
DCLG consultation update
The aims of the consultation which ended on 2 April
2012 were to understand user views on regional
statistics in the light of the closure of the Government
Office network. It was proposed to end the publication
of statistics at the former Government Office regional
level.
BURISA Board response
This is the response of the Board of the British Urban
and Regional Information Systems Association
(BURISA) to that part of the current DCLG consultation
dealing with the future of regional statistics within the
Department.
It is noteworthy that in the consultation document the
regional statistics issue is treated very differently than
the other proposed changes in DCLG statistics. There is
no evidence given about the nature of the range of
statistics being threatened and uses to which they are
put.
The annual publication, "Regional Trends", has already
been discontinued, regrettably. So the proposal now is
the cessation of regional statistics publication in
electronic form for the 9 English regions.
The value that will be lost is that these statistics provide
a concise, digestible 'top tier' picture of sub-
national patterns and trends across a wide range of
topics. The citing of the closure of the Government
Office Network as the justification wrongly implies that
the GON was the main or the only affected
user community.
The proposal appears to be unknown or
unacknowledged in other parts of the public sector and
academic statistical service and internationally. Recent
contact with regular contributors to the BURISA
columns highlights that ONS in relation to census
outputs and preliminary Beyond 2011 scoping and other
government departments, including Transport, the Home
Office and DEFRA have no plans to discontinue
publication of regional statistics.
The current regional geography has been accepted and
widely recognised in the statistical community and well
beyond for several decades, enabling longer term trends
to be understood. Regional statistics also provide a
relevant context or benchmark for policy makers
operating at county, district and local levels, including
LEPs. The discontinuation of regional statistics is likely
to lead to wasteful and duplicating efforts to recreate
them by aggregating smaller area data. The savings
would be relatively small bearing in mind that the raw
data will still be collected at local sources.
As a fall back position DCLG should ensure that data
integrity is maintained to allow others in the academic
community or private sector to maintain time series of
compatible data at regional level.
BURISA recommends that before DCLG goes ahead
unilaterally with this proposal they allow time for
meaningful user engagement with users across central
and local government and in the academic and private
sectors. This process could start with a preliminary open
discussion in the GSS Regional and Geographic
Statistics Committee. BURISA is willing to be
represented at any ensuing meeting with users.
Below are brief answers to the consultation questions.
Consultation Questions
In view of the abolition of the Government Office
Network and the move away from regional level
administration, it has been proposed to end the
publication of regional-level statistics.
3.1 Do you agree with the proposal to end the
publication of statistics at the former Government Office
regional level?
NO for the reasons set out above.
3.2 What alternative presentation would you find helpful
e.g. Local Enterprise Partnership areas, NUTS 2
(counties or groups of counties) or some other?
If collated for counties or groups of counties then
aggregation to existing regions as well.
3.3 For any geographic level suggested please explain
how the statistics are or would be used, and what actions
and decisions are likely to be taken using them.
See above. A wide range of decisions across many
sectors.
3.4 If we stop publishing statistics at a regional level,
would there be an impact on you or your customers. If
so, what would that be?
See above
DCLG has advised the position as at 4 May 2012 is
that nearly 100 responses were received to the
consultation on proposed changes to its statistical
activities
The Department is grateful to those that took the time to
respond on any of the three areas covered by this
consultation. A formal summary of consultation
responses and the Government's response to these will
be published in due course.

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www.twri.org.uk% %%%%%% %%%%%%%
Tel:0191-2211 222, Email: twri@twri.org.uk
%
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2011 Census Conference
!Making best use of the 2011 Census"
The TWRI Policy and Research Conference on the 2011 Census wi!!"#$"%$!&"'(")("*+!!+',-."
College, York on Friday 5th
October 2012, 10.00 a.m. / 4.30 p.m.
The Conference will feature presentations from ONS, local government, other public sector
and academic users of the census and census data suppliers and cover the following issues:-
What data the 2011 Census will provide and when
Opportunities and challenges for public sector, local government and academia
Alternative routes to accessing the 2011 Census
Area profiles - developing and presenting census results at a range of geographic
levels.
The Conference will give attendees an opportunity to engage with presenters, exhibitors and
other delegates about the census data and its usage.
The Conference is aimed at researchers, practitioners and policy makers across the public and
private sectors.
Booking form is available for download on TWRI website: www.twri.org.uk
Conference fee is £135 (including lunch and refreshments) discounted to £105 if booked
before 1st
August 2012.
This Conference is sponsored by SASPAC and InstantAtlas.
!"#$%&'()*+%,-.%#/0/,1*2%
%

Statistics with benefits!
Callum Foster at the Office for National Statistics
(ONS) gives a progress report on the rich source of
data to be delivered from the 2011 Census and how
you will be able to use it to its full benefit
The census release is a valuable and unique data set,
offering a wide range of uses and applications. ONS is
committed to fully exploiting the opportunities for using
the data, with projects underway to promote best
practice, provide a website for access to analyses
drawing on census data and improve the ability to
produce innovative data visualisations.
One project that will deliver to these objectives is Web
Data Access (WDA). Currently in development, the
changes will provide enhanced functionality to enable
users to access 2011 Census data through the ONS
website, as well as ‘machine to machine’ access through
an application programming interface (API).
The changes are being developed with full engagement
from intermediaries, partners and the professional
statistical community. This will help to promote the
wider use of our outputs and find out how users utilise
the data. It will also allow us to develop case studies to
encourage potential users with similar profiles, and
ensure that analysts, researchers, statisticians and
economists can fully exploit the census results.
Work is focused on the ONS website as the main
dissemination channel for all ONS outputs and 2011
Census results will also be made available through the
Nomis and Neighbourhood Statistics websites. The
ONS website will be enhanced to provide improved
search & navigation capabilities, together with
functionality to allow on-line exploration of datasets.
Additionally, the ONS API will provide external
organisations with direct access to ONS datasets to re-
use on their own systems.
Application programming interface (API)
The API is a mechanism that enables one application to
programmatically talk to another application. In this
context it enables a third party application, for instance a
website, to programmatically discover and retrieve ONS
data, and use it on their own system for their users.
ONS will be providing an API Service with features
such as registration, forum, gallery, instructions and
tutorials and enablement tools aimed at supporting and
encouraging use of the API, and promoting collaboration
between users.
Data explorer
The data explorer is an online facility to allow users to
explore and interrogate datasets made available on the
ONS website. Using the ONS data explorer, users will
be able to navigate to and find datasets with the ability
to select different levels of geography and geographic
areas, filter on variables included in the dataset and view
datasets on-line, or download onto their own systems.
The WDA team are currently showing draft versions of
new pages and tools to ONS website users, in order to
gather and incorporate feedback. Users also have the
opportunity to test the new online tools before they go
live with plans for a beta version of the API being made
available in advance of the final version so that
organisations can start experimenting.
The changes being developed by the WDA project are
aimed to accompany the second release of 2011 Census
results.
The first release of information from the 2011 census is
planned for July 2012. As well as the population figures
for England and Wales, the material to be published will
include the census population estimates for each local
authority together with
· census population estimates and their comparator
(aggregated) sources, such as the school census, patient
register and Department of Work & Pension’s customer
information system (CIS) pensions and child benefit
data
· a summary of the census population estimate, the
census count, response rates and confidence intervals
· the relevant components for each census
population estimate, including the count, the amount
added by coverage assessment and adjustment, plus any
other necessary adjustments
To help users understand the material, ONS is planning
a series of tutorials ahead of the publication of the
results. These are aimed at users, to help them
understand and have confidence in how the estimates
were constructed and how the quality assurance process
was undertaken. The sessions will provide clear and
simple explanations with anonymised examples
covering the coverage assessment and adjustment
process, the different components used to construct the
estimates and the quality assurance process. For more
information on these and to register your interest, please
contact smc.team@ons.gsi.gov.uk
Get involved
If you are interested in getting involved in testing the
changes to the ONS website then please contact
stephen.d.kay@ons.gsi.gov.uk
If you are interested in getting access to the beta API
then please contact onsapi@ons.gsi.gov.uk .

Census Analysis – Office for National Statistics
(ONS) work programme update
The Office for National Statistics is conducting a census
analysis work programme to provide users with a series
of timely analytical products to meet their needs. A
joined-up approach will be adopted to extend across
ONS, other government departments, local government,
external researchers and academics in order to link in
with analysis produced externally to ONS and develop
and maintain an Analytical Centre for the Census
(ACC).
Developing the census analytical work programme
Consultation has taken place in various forms; internal
consultation to utilise the expertise of relevant business
areas; workshops, seminars and meetings to gain input
from other government departments, local government,
academics and researchers; and continued discussion via
various key groups (e.g. Government Statistical Service
theme groups and Central & Local Government
Information Partnership). This programme will identify
topics and products as well as a coordinated time-frame
for delivery. Following the second release of 2011
Census statistics ONS will deliver a rolling programme
of work to include the publication of short stories,
themed papers and compendiums. Analysis will be
supplemented by other forms of media such as data
visualisation and podcasts.
The short term aim is to provide initial plans by topic
area for consideration by key users. High level analysis
plans will be included in the prospectus initially,
followed by further updates as information becomes
available.
The Analytical Centre for the Census and links with
census analysis produced externally to ONS
The ONS census analysis work programme is not just
about identifying analysis that ONS can produce, but to
consider how we can link and coordinate with data users
and producers of analysis across the UK to realise the
full benefits of the census. The development of an
analytical centre will be a tool for helping us to achieve
this goal. One of the approaches to developing the ACC
is for it to be integrated with other developments that are
being taken forward as part of the wider census analysis
work programme. The ACC is still at the scoping and
defining stage, but some suggestions about what it could
include are:
· a news section and a plan of scheduled work to be
produced by both ONS, other government departments,
local government and academics / researchers;
· a facility to access internal and external analysis
(split into appropriate categories). ONS products could
be supplemented by visualisations and social media,
while other products produced externally to ONS could
include a synopsis and a link;
· guidance and best practice (including some
templates to ensure that ONS products are branded)
· access to a discussion forum.
In order for the centre to work and deliver on its aims, it
is imperative that data users and producers of analysis
across all sectors ‘buy-in’ to the ideas expressed and
have a mechanism for their analysis to be included in a
timetable and then ultimately as a link. To ensure that
this happens, ONS is currently liaising with a number of
organisations. Early discussions have proved extremely
useful and the ideas for the ACC have been welcomed.
Contacts:
Craig Taylor
01633 456333
craig.taylor@ons.gsi.gov.uk
Jon Gough
01633 456720
jon.gough@ons.gsi.gov.uk
Beyond 2011 programme – update
ONS
The Beyond 2011 programme in ONS is progressing
well with investigation of the various statistical options
for producing the population and socio-demographic
data required by users in England and Wales and the
methodology behind them. This includes testing models
for the use of administrative and survey data as an
alternative to the UK's traditional census approach. We
expect to release reports on this work in a few month's
time.
Our user requirements consultation closed in January
2012 and the resulting consultation report is due to be
released shortly on the ONS website. Work is going
forward on the second phase of engagement with
individual stakeholder groups leading to a statement of
user requirements which will be produced by December
2012. We are also developing research on the public
acceptability dimensions of the Programme and are in
the early stages of investigation onto the privacy and
equality impact assessments that the work will require.
In June we will be holding an international assurance
meeting at which experts from the US Census Bureau,
Statistics Canada, Australian Bureau of Statistics, Stats
New Zealand, Stats Netherlands and other key
international offices will provide quality assurance for
the direction of the programme.
We will be providing regular updates on the progress of
the programme in the BURISA newsletter including a
more substantial article in the next issue.

School Place Planning
Professor John Howson
The Department for Education and the Office of
National Statistics have recently revised upwards figures
for the likely increase in the school population in
England during the period up to 2020. The view is now
that there will be some 800,000 extra pupils by 2020,
with 700,000 of these needing to be accommodated in
the primary sector. This increase in primary pupil
numbers will eventually flow through to the secondary
sector, but not until the early 2020s.
Full details of current national and regional projections
and the effects of factors such as migration on the
figures can be found at
http://tinyurl.com/pupilnumbers
The latest figures will take the primary school
population back to levels last seen in the boom years of
the early 1970s, and will put a significant strain upon the
system, particularly in London and the South East. The
planning of school places remains a local function
although the arrangements for any new schools that are
needed as a result of rising rolls is now determined by
the Secretary of State at Westminster.
The impact of insufficient school places in a local area is
still likely to have serious consequences, not least for
local politicians to whom parents may turn if they are
unable to secure a place for their child at the school of
their choice, especially while central government
continues to make statements about parental choice and
allowing ‘good’ schools to expand.
As many local authority officers know only too well
planning school places is not an exact science, even
when there is an effectively functioning housing market.
Now plans for new varieties of schools such as
University Technical Schools and the new style
‘additional’ schools that have universally become known
as ‘free’ schools have made the problem even more
complicated at a time when the housing market is in
some disarray as well.
In any area where it can be assumed that all pupils will
attend their local school determining the number of
pupils, and which schools they will attend, can be
relatively straightforward. How many pupils of different
ages will properties of different sizes generate at any one
time? When new estates are built, how will the profile of
occupiers alter between the first arrivals and a mature
estate? At what point will a new generation of families
arrive with a different pupil profile to that of existing
residents?
But, if a local school suddenly becomes popular dues to
a successful Osfted inspection and associated press hype
what will happen to the existing model for determining
school places? Will more parents of school-age children
move into the local area to try to secure places at the
school? Similarly, if the school is put into special
measures will it adversely affect demand?
The recent boom in the ‘buy to let’ property market
together with problems with the mortgage market for
first-time buyers will also have altered traditional
patterns of demand for school places in some areas of
the country. But, it is the new types of school
organisation that probably will generate the greatest
uncertainty. Will affluent parents try to create ‘free
schools’ rather than pay for places in the private sector,
and will new faith schools affect the demands of parents
to move future pupils from schools they might have
been expected to attend in the past?
However, it is the baby boom, and its long-term
consequences that are going to have the most impact on
determining the need for primary school places during
the next decade.
The arrival of four and even three year olds in some
schools has meant that classrooms that might have been
available for extra school-age pupils are now used for
other purposes. These under-5s aren’t going to be
removed from school settings, especially in view of the
importance placed on Early Years and the Foundation
Stage of Learning by politicians of all parties.
This means that existing schools will need to expand,
perhaps with temporary classrooms in playgrounds: also
that many new schools will need to be built. Where land
for new schools can be found will determine whether
wholesale redrawing of school boundaries will be
necessary.
What is clear is that the increased pressure on school
places is likely to result in many more appeals in the
future by parents who have not secured the school of
their choice, or indeed any of the schools on their list of
preferences. Hearing these appeals will result in yet
another call on hard-pressed local authority budgets.
Professor John Howson is a director of
DataforEducation.info and a visiting research fellow at
the University of Oxford in addition to being a visiting
professor at Oxford Brookes University. He writes a
weekly on-line column for Children Services Weekly.

Pictures to spark a thousand words
English Health Profiles
Helen Shaw, Health Profiles project manager
Don Sinclair, Health Profiles project director
South East Public Health Observatory
Health is important to everyone. It’s often easy to get
people talking about health issues, and engaged in
thinking about how to improve health and wellbeing.
But it is also a complex issue with a lot of specific
terminology – even more so when describing the health
of a group. How can we provide people with
information that is both technically correct and also
clearly presented, so that their discussions and decisions
are well informed? This is particularly important now, as
Health and Wellbeing Boards (HWBs) are established to
oversee local plans for health improvement. The use of
a range of measures to describe health has been termed
‘health profiling’ and its development has been led by
the Public Health Observatories in the UK.
The English Health Profiles were developed in 2006 to
provide consistent, accessible summaries of health
information for every local authority in England. They
were particularly intended for local councillors, who
have a vital role in influencing the services available to
local communities. However, councillors and many local
stakeholders may not be familiar with medical or
statistical terminology, or public health policies. The
Health Profiles help start local discussions about some
of the most important factors that influence health and
wellbeing, to enable local decision makers to engage
various partners from the community and together plan
how best to improve health.
The Health Profiles provide a brief description of the
health of a defined population, compared to the average
for England. This can identify important issues for
prioritisation and action. In the case of the local
authority Health Profiles, the population is
geographically defined – describing the health of all
residents of the local authority. Other profiling products
have focused on different populations – for example, the
Child Health Profiles specifically describe the health of
children in the area.
Since 2006, the Health Profiles have been updated
annually. They have also evolved to include new
content and new data presentations.
Because Health Profiles are intended to help identify
local problems for action, they need to include some
form of comparison showing which problems are most
significant or which local areas are most affected. The
‘Unique Selling Point’ of the local authority Health
Profiles is the ‘spine chart’, which achieves both of
these aims in a reasonably simple format. It includes a
range of factors relating to the health of the local
population. These are described as “indicators” and the
Health Profile compares the value of these indicators in
the local population to the average for England as a
whole.

The spine chart uses a series of coloured circles to show
how indicators for a particular area compare to all other
areas in England. These circles are shaded red, amber,
or green to show whether the value for the area is
statistically significantly different to the England
average. They are also shown against a grey horizontal
range to show where the area fits in the rankings for all
of England.
Other charts within the Health Profiles provide more
detail, e.g. trends over time, and the ‘At a glance’ text on
the front page provides an immediately accessible
summary with existing agreed priorities for action and
links to sources with further detail.
The selection of Health Profiles content requires
balancing several factors:
· the need to highlight priority public health topics
· the requirement to focus on problems that can be
addressed by local services
· the availability of data across the entire country, to
enable production of profiles for all local authorities in
England
· the need to keep the profiles intelligible for non-
technical users
· the limited space available in the Health Profiles
To achieve this balance, the production team includes
representation from users (councillors and local public
health professionals) as well as Department of Health,
statisticians and data analysts. Because the profiles are a
partnership product from all Public Health Observatories
(PHOs) in England, the first proposals for content come
from the PHOs who lead on particular health related
topics. These proposals are discussed by the production
team to ensure that information is both technically sound
and easy for users to interpret. This is important, since
there are many health related issues that can be reported
using NHS data sources, but their relevance may not be
clear to users who are not health professionals. There
are several tools already available which present data for
professionals, and so Health Profiles focus on
‘headlines’ to help start discussions between local
stakeholders i.e. local government, health services,
social care, and the public.
The Health Profiles need to reflect health for a diverse
population throughout all stages of life, and therefore
there is a limit to the number of indicators that can be
provided for any one issue. Where possible, an indicator
is selected that will draw attention to potential problems,
so that discussion will draw out more detail. For
example, the profiles include an indicator showing the
percentage of people on GP registers diagnosed with
diabetes. This can only tell users whether the
percentage is similar to the rest of England – it cannot
show why it might be different, or whether particular
groups of people are affected, or whether the people
diagnosed are well cared for – all this information will
come out of further discussions and may require use of
additional information sources. There are more specific
PHO profiling tools that provide further indicators
focused on specific issues, and these can be used to help
understand an area or problem in more detail – for
example the Local Alcohol Profiles or Community
Mental Health Profiles.
PHO health intelligence analysts ensure that the
indicators selected are both valid (measure what they are
intended to measure) and correct. Full details of how
the indicators are created are published online in the
Health Profiles 2011 Indicator Guide. (For more
information about understanding how to choose and use
indicators, the PHO network Good Indicators Guide
provides a clear and helpful overview.) Quality
assurance of the indicators is undertaken at several
levels – first within the production PHO (where two
analysts review the data), then externally by another
PHO. Finally the draft profiles are checked to ensure
that no transcription errors have arisen. In 2011, the
Health Profile generation tool was adapted to enable
automatic generation of the summary “At a glance”
messages directly from the profile data. This has
improved consistency and reduced the person time
required to generate the Profiles, although a human eye
is still required for some final edits as the autogeneration
logic cannot reflect the huge potential variation in trend
patterns.
The local authority Health Profiles data can also be
displayed in interactive maps, and compared using the
interactive spine chart facility available on the Health
Profiles website, www.healthprofiles.info .

Here we are comparing Central Bedfordshire with
Sheffield using the online web atlas version of the
English Health Profiles. (Users can click on the ‘Data’
button to change the indicator displayed in the map, and
use Ctrl + click to select areas for comparison).
This comparison shows the values of the indicators for
Central Bedfordshire and Sheffield at the same time,
illustrating how their values (on the spine chart) are
quite different for some areas). All the components of
the page can be enlarged, and can be copied for use in
other documents. It is also possible to select a group of
local authorities using the charts - for example, clicking
on a ‘slice’ within the pie chart will highlight local
authorities within that section of the national results on
both the range chart and the map.
A Health Profiles double map atlas is also available
which enables the user to show maps of two different
indicators, and the relationship between them. This can
be helpful in showing people how two issues interact –
for example, children in poverty and obese children are
related, whereas others are not, for example children in
poverty and hip fractures in the over-65s. Using these
graphs to highlight the association between specific
health outcomes and particular social factors can help to
begin a discussion that leads on to considering the
potential causes and influences that may be relevant to a
particular issue or area.
The Local Health Profiles became Official Statistics in
2011, and must follow the Code of Practice for Official
Statistics. This includes principles of impartiality and
confidentiality, sound methods, public accessibility and
user engagement. The user engagement principle is
particularly important for Health Profiles as its intended
audiences may not be familiar with the terminology or
with some of the displays used to demonstrate
relationships or distributions. Potential new indicators
and designs are tested by sending them out to a User
Panel of over 300 interested members, who can then
reply with their comments. These are collated to feed
into decisions, by the Project and Programme Boards.
User feedback is prioritised and has helped to make
significant improvements to the profiles, including
changes to chart presentation, indicator selection, and
layout.
User requests have also led to the development of new
products within the Health Profiles family. Many users
expressed an interest in data for smaller areas, to
identify issues for particular neighbourhoods or to look
at local problems that might be hidden when data was
presented across a whole local authority. This sparked
the creation of the new online resource LocalHealth.
LocalHealth provides health related data for Middle
Super Output Areas (MSOAs) which are smaller areas
than local authorities – they reflect a population of just
over 7,000. The online tool (available at
www.localhealth.org.uk ) enables users to see data for
each individual MSOA, and also to create their own
self-defined area by selecting the MSOAs within it
(which can be geographically separate). The tool now
includes the updated Joint Strategic Needs Assessment
dataset, which gives a broad range of indicators, and can
show both maps and preformatted reports for selected
areas.

The tool includes the option of background mapping,
which can be faded in and out to view the data
mapping against local features. It is also possible to
overlay boundaries including local authority wards, to
help identify areas where you may wish to build up a
selection of MSOAs.
The detailed reports available for each MSOA or
selected combination of MSOAs include information
on the area’s population, and bar charts which show
related indicators in red / amber/ green to give a
similar display to the spine charts.
LocalHealth will be updated to a new version of the
software over the coming months, and this will
support a wider range of reports.
The new local authority Health Profiles will be
released in June 2012, and launched at the first day of
the Local Government Association annual conference.
The 2012 profiles will include updated charts, new
data, and refreshed spine charts including some new
indicators. You can access all the profiles, interactive
tools, indicator guides and background information,
contact us, and join our User Panel via the Health
Profiles website at www.healthprofiles.info
References
Hill, A., Balanda, K., Galbraith, L., Greenacre, J.,
Sinclair, D. Profiling health in the UK and Ireland.
Public Health 2010; 124: 253-258
Health Profiles www.healthprofiles.info
Child Health Profiles
http://tinyurl.com/bpk9qah
Local Alcohol Profiles for England
http://www.lape.org.uk/
Community Mental Health Profiles
http://www.nepho.org.uk/cmhp/
Health Profiles 2011 Indicator Guide
http://tinyurl.com/higuide
PHO network Good Indicator Guide
http://tinyurl.com/higuide2
Health Profiles double map atlas
http://preview.tinyurl.com/doubleatlas
Code of Practice for Official Statistics
http://tinyurl.com/codeoffs
LocalHealth www.localhealth.org.uk

•
URISA’s 50 Years as an International Organization
Greg Babinski URISA
On behalf of the Urban and Regional Information
Systems Association (URISA), its members, staff, and
Board of Directors, greetings to our colleagues in the
British Urban and Regional Information Systems
Association (BURISA).
This year URISA will hold its 50th Annual
Conference, GIS-Pro 2012, in Portland, Oregon 30
September through 4 October, 2012. As this landmark
event approaches, I would like to share my reflections
on the origins of URISA and on its successes and
challenges living up to the vision of its founders nearly
half a century ago. URISA recently reaffirmed its
original commitment as an international organization
and I would like to share some of the activities we
have planned to put this vision into effect. Lastly, I
would like to invite renewed connections between our
two organizations for the mutual benefit of our
members.
Background
URISA was established to be an international
educational organization without political, social,
financial or national bias.
The Urban and Regional Information Systems
Association had its origins in the academic community
of the early 1960’s. The early years of URISA have
been well documented. URISA’s past presidents are
currently compiling a book to be published for our
50th Annual Conference that will document the
contributions that our organization has made to the
development of many domains of knowledge related
to information systems in general, and geospatial
technology and applications in particular.
Originating from the activity of Prof. Edgar M.
Horwood at the University of Washington in Seattle,
URISA has always had an international focus. Article
II of the URISA Constitution states:
URISA is an international Association to stimulate,
encourage and otherwise provide for the advancement
of an interdisciplinary and multi-professional
approach to planning, designing and operating urban
information systems. The Association shall operate as
an objective educational organization without
political, social, financial or national bias. Its main
objectives shall be to foster exchange of ideas and
promote studies focusing on urban information
systems for planning and operational needs as well as
for analyzing the broader issues and the consequences
of such systems. The Association shall support these
objectives by promoting acquaintance and discussion
among its members and with scholars in related fields,
by stimulating research, by encouraging the
publication of scholarly studies, and by performing
services to aid the advancement of its members and
the field of urban development.
Universities by their very nature are international in
scope. Learning, research, and the dissemination of
knowledge know no national boundaries. Indeed,
scholarship and learning are most effective when they
are incubated in a diverse environment. The best
universities are characterized by a large proportion of
international faculty and students, but we might ask –
do they attract diversity because they are among the
best, or are they among the best because of their
diversity?
While it is not a university, a valid question for
URISA is whether its current stature as a professional
and educational organization attracts international
members and participation or if international members
and participation are the basis for URISA’s standing
within the community. What is the record of URISA
as an international organization and what should its
future be?
During its early years, in practice, URISA’s ability to
develop as a true international organization was
limited by a number of factors:
· Outside of the academic community, international
travel and communications by administrators of urban
and regional agencies was very limited by local
government policy, budget, and practice.
· The cost and lack of speed of international postal
mail limited effective communications and the
exchange of professional publications.
· Technology of the time, including air travel,
computers, and international telephony, was poorly
developed at best and non-existent in key area, and the
internet had yet to be invented - all of which hampered
broad international participation in URISA.
· The level of economic development in more than
half of the world at the time was considered to be
‘Third World’ and hence not fertile ground for
implementation of urban and regional information
systems.
· Much of the world was divided into two broad
political camps – the ‘West’ and the ‘Communist
Block.’ This division further limited opportunities for
international exchange in the field of urban and
regional information systems.
These factors did not prevent some international
involvement in URISA at the academic level from the
very beginning, but such participation at the planning
and operational level, as envisioned by the URISA
Constitution, has always been rare.
In 1972 the British Urban and Regional Information
Systems Association (BURISA) was established along
the lines of URISA. The first BURISA Newsletter
included an article titled “US Association” which
sketched the early history of URISA, urged BURISA
members to consider taking a URISA membership,
and indicated that ‘BURISA has already established

firm links with URISA and some material appearing in
their newsletter will be summarized for British
consumption.’
Early issues of the BURISA Newsletter listed liaisons
from non-U.K. organizations in France, Denmark,
Canada, and West Germany. URISA was designated as
the organization representing the U.S. to BURISA. Jack
Beresford (1972-1974) and C.F. Davies (1974 – 1976)
were the URISA representatives to BURISA. However,
after 1976 the BURISA Newsletter dropped references to
non-U.K. liaisons and a brief survey of early issues of the
BURISA Newsletter suggests that URISA material was
never summarized for U.K. consumption, as planned.
Mike Kevany from PlanGraphics (Frankfort, Kentucky)
regularly attends meetings of UDMS - the Urban Data
Management Society – a European association formed in
1971 (www.udms.net). He had encouraged contacts
between EDMS and URISA but there is no indication that
any such formal contacts occurred. Mike Kevany and
David Prosperi from Florida Atlantic University are listed
as current U.S. liaisons to UDMS. Outside Europe, there
are also current UDMS liaisons from Brazil, Malaysia,
South Africa, and Iran.
In 1983, the Australasian Urban and Regional
Information Systems Association (AURISA) was
organized, modeled upon URISA. In the mid-1980’s,
there was an attempt to form a URISA Chapter in Mexico
but it never succeeded. In about 2002, there was
discussion with a member from Nigeria about forming a
URISA chapter there, but nothing concrete ever
developed. At around that time, the first discussions
about forming a Caribbean Chapter began.
Consideration of URISA’s effectiveness as an
international organization likely occurred from time to
time in the past. In late 2001, URISA Board members Ed
Wells and Zorica Nedovic-Budic launched a URISA
International Task Force (ITF). Other members of the
ITF were Kathy Covert, Shoreh Elhami, Sanjiv Gandhi,
Dianne Haley, and Shilpam Pandey. The ITF was to
recommend policy related to requests from chapters and
to establish formal relations with associations outside the
U.S. and Canada. During the following year, the ITF
developed a proposed URISA Policy on International
Affiliations and Liaisons (July 2002).
The 2001-2002 URISA Board was nearing adoption of
the proposed policy, but did not have time to do so before
the change-over of the Board at the 2002 Annual
Conference. The discussion related to URISA as an
international organization then went in a different
direction with the new Board.
The consequence of this history and these limitations for
URISA has been that its strongest international
component has been in North America – primarily in
Canada, with recently growing participation from the
Caribbean region. A brief review of what URISA has
accomplished internationally will demonstrate that the
organization has never forgotten its international focus,
but also indicates some deficiencies and a possible way
forward.
URISA’s Ongoing International Focus
The following inventory shows that in practice URISA
has always had accomplishments as an international
organization despite the limitations described above.
International contributors to and participation in URISA
conferences:
A sampling of non-U.S. subject matter and authors
indicates that there has been a steady growth in the
international aspect of URISA conferences. The 1967
AC Proceedings included 25 papers, of which only one
(4%) was by a non-American author. By the 1987 AC,
Canadian authors and/or subject matter had increased to
12 of 84 papers (14%). The following year, 1988, 15 of
95 papers (16%) were ‘international’ – with 10 Canadian
and five Australian papers.
In 1989, the international component increased further
with 25% of the 95 papers having a non-U.S. focus,
including 14 Canadian papers and an additional 10 from
or about Australia, France, Mexico, the Netherlands,
Barbados, and Spain. Fast forward to 1999 and the
overall ‘international’ percentage remained about 25%
but the composition changed with nine of 84 papers from
Canada and an additional 12 from Hong Kong, France,
Guam, Germany, New Zealand, Central Europe, Latin
America, Lebanon, Australia, and New Zealand.
During the highly successful 2006 AC in Vancouver,
Canada, 50 (31%) of the 160 papers were authored by
Canadians, and a further 10 (7%) were authored from or
written about South Korea, London, Venice, Australia,
Denmark, Portugal, Germany, Bosnia, the EU, Sweden,
and Japan.
Clearly, the URISA AC is a highly valued event that
provides a unique venue for international intellectual
discourse and exchange in the field of urban and regional
information systems.
URISA’s specialty conferences include GIS and
Computer Aided Mass Appraisal, GIS for Transit, GIS for
Public Health, and the URISA Addressing Conference.
These specialty events attract international participation
as well. For example, during the 2011 URISA GIS in
Public Health Conference in Atlanta, of 175 attendees, 38
(22%) were from outside the U.S., including six from
Armenia, three from Australia, three from Azerbaijan,
two from India, seven from Kazakhstan, five from
Kenya, two from Sweden, three from Uganda, and two
from the U.K., as well as individual attendees from
Canada, Brazil, Japan, Pakistan, Portugal, and Saudi
Arabia. Because of the large number of attendees from
former Soviet republics, selected sessions were translated
live into Russian during the conference. This conference
was also successful in attracting posters from Public
Health professionals working in GIS who could not
attend the event in person, including from Indonesia, the
Ukraine, and the Republic of Georgia.
TO BE CONTINUED

BURISA 192
GeoPlace – 1 year on
Gayle Gander
This time last year, GeoPlace was in the process of
being set up. The key challenge at that time was to
create the National Address Gazetteer and enable the
creation of a product range that could be supplied to the
market by Ordnance Survey.
A year on, not only has this ambition been achieved, by
working with Ordnance Survey and local authorities,
GeoPlace is also: incorporating Scottish data in the
National Address Gazetteer; providing the ability to give
customers Change Only Updates to their data; and
setting out new contractual relationships with local
authorities.
This all owes a huge amount to the local authorities who
work with GeoPlace to maintain the NLPG, the NSG
and National Address Gazetteer. The scale of work to
synchronise local government data with other 3rd party
data sources should not be underestimated - we are
talking about bringing together datasets of over 100
million records. In addition to this work, we have seen
huge improvements in data quality. This is no reflection
on the quality of data previously, but of a continued
effort to ensure the data provided to users is as perfect as
it can possibly be.
With the addition of Scottish data, we will have removed
one of the main obstacles to migration to the new
products, namely the previous lack of GB cover. Once
the data in made available, which will be in the near
future, we expect widespread uptake throughout all
areas of government - both local and central, emergency
services and health.
We are now developing our business plan for the year
and this sets out further goals terms of technical
development on our interface with local authorities, re-
inforcing our role in the management of street
information, developing our offerings to support local
authorities in their work and supporting users in the
implementation of AddressBase. The key aspects of the
plan will be published in due course.
Working to INSPIRE
We have also developed an INSPIRE compliant view
service to publish data from the NSG as part of the
INSPIRE Transport theme. Through this publishing
service local authorities will meet the INSPIRE
publishing requirements for the transport theme.
GeoPlace previously worked on the European Address
and the Buildings Thematic Working Groups that
originally defined the themes, and we are now leading
on INSPIRE regulations for the Address and Transport
themes within the UK Location Programme. The NSG
has been registered as an INSPIRE dataset on
data.gov.uk alongside the NLPG and AddressBase™.
GeoPlace has responsibility to provide the NSG as a
‘reference dataset’ as defined in the INSPIRE
regulations, on behalf of all 174 local highway
authorities responsible for street data in England and
Wales. The provision of reference datasets removes the
need for individual local authorities to publish this data
as the information is held centrally by GeoPlace. Rather
than 174 datasets published individually, it is more
efficient and cost effective for a single body to publish
the data. This provides the sector with substantial
savings.
In order to do this, GeoPlace developed an INSPIRE
compliant web mapping service (WMS) to view NSG
data as part of the INSPIRE Transport theme. This
allows a user to make a request to view data via a web
mapping service or GIS application. An image of the
street network is served up allowing an overlay within
the user’s own data. Access to the service is via a secure
login for registered NSG users only.
Whilst GeoPlace compiles the address data from local
authorities in England and Wales, Ordnance Survey has
the sole distribution rights to the NLPG and
AddressBase products. This means that Ordnance
Survey is responsible for publishing these address
reference datasets.
Further developments are planned by GeoPlace to help
meet the next stages of the INSPIRE initiatives due in
mid-2012.
Improving Local Equality Data (ILED) project
Tallulah Lines
The Equality and Human Rights Commission, Scottish
Government, and the Improvement Service worked in
partnership to deliver the project over twelve months
until February 2012. The project provided a wide
range of practical, unique and hands-on support to four
local authorities to develop and improve local equality
evidence within the outcomes approach.
The project has now concluded, and a number of key
findings have been identified and are listed below.
They can be summarised as:
• focussing on the outcomes approach,
• local equality evidence and
• collaborative working.
The ILED project management team has produced a
series of practical learning papers intended to support
local authorities and their partners to approach and
tackle the common issues and challenges we found
within the project. The papers are available at
http://tinyurl.com/ctq8wet
Project participants highlighted a variety of issues
regarding improving local level equality information.
Some of these challenges are technical in relation to
data gaps but some are perceptions and attitudes
generally found across public services. Other practical
changes such as using harmonised equality monitoring
questions or using the same questions in local surveys
as national surveys can improve both the quality of
data gathered and the potential to compare results both
locally and nationally.

Neighbourhood Statistics – An Update.
Steve Mead, ONS, May 2012
It has been another busy period for those responsible for
the Neighbourhood Statistics (NeSS) website and
associated products, with updates to existing tools, a
new article, and confirmation that the second Phase of
2011 Census Statistics will be released on NeSS.
Local and LEP Profiles – Updates
Firstly, the latest updates to the Local Profiles were
published at the end of April. These have proved
themselves again and again to be a valuable tool for
local authorities since they were first made available
early in 2010. The regular updates ensure their topicality
and the fact that they are now available directly from the
website rather than on CD, as they were initially, ensure
that the information is always available immediately.
Originally developed for policy makers involved in
preparing Local Economic Assessments, they use
official statistics to understand the economic,
environmental and social picture of an area.
The Local Profiles are accompanied on the
Neighbourhood Statistics website by the Local
Economic Partnership (LEP) Profiles. These are based
on the Local Profiles and are also free to access. There
are two LEP Profiles available: Comparator Profiles,
which enable derived official statistics to be compared
between LEPs; and LEP Local Authority Comparator
Profiles which allow official statistics to be compared
for each of the local authority areas within each LEP. An
update to the LEP Profiles will be available in late May
2012.
Local Profiles - An Approach to Understanding
Benefit Claimants - Wokingham Case Study
An article has been produced which looks at the
characteristics of benefit claimants for Wokingham local
authority to illustrate how the Local Profiles data can be
used to broaden an understanding of the socioeconomic
characteristics of an area. The analysis focuses on
benefit claimants by claim type, and the age and
duration profiles of claimants of out-of-work benefit.
The findings show that residents in Wokingham were
less likely to claim for out-of-work benefits than
residents nationally or within the region. The age profile
of benefit recipients in Wokingham also varied, older
people in Wokingham were more likely to claim
Employment Support and Allowance and Incapacity
benefit and over a longer time period than younger
people who were more likely to be claiming Jobseeker's
Allowance.
CoTA Viewer
Elsewhere on the NeSS website an update to the Change
Over Time Analysis (CoTA) Viewer has been released.
CoTA Viewer is a visual tool, with accompanying Excel
worksheets, which assists the analysis of change over
time for small areas. In this latest update, worklessness
data from 2001 to 2010 are used, allowing users to view
the pattern of claimants at a small area level (Lower
Layer Super Output Area), and to explore whether the
distribution of claimants has changed over time.
Different benefit types can be explored including Job
Seekers Allowance, Incapacity, and Lone Parent
benefits.
Census Statistics
By now members of BURISA will be aware of the 2011
Census prospectus and the publication timetable for the
release of results. For Neighbourhood Statistics the
most significant phase is the second (November 2012 –
February 2013) with the release of the Quick and Key
statistics.
AGI GeoCommunity '12: Sharing the Power of Place
18-20 September 2012
East Midlands Conference Centre, Nottingham
AGI GeoCommunity is the largest and most
comprehensive independent conference in the UK
digital mapping and geospatial calendar. The
conference provides real insight and leadership in
current geographic information and location based
issues via a range of keynote addresses and conference
papers as well as by hands on training and face to face
delegate networking.You can hear outstanding,
visionary and thought- provoking plenary speakers.
You can learn from and meet leading industry experts
and thought leaders - stay on the leading edge of
industry and technical issues. You can hear from
around 50 speakers on topics covering a wide range of
pertinent topics in today’s geocommunity. You can
learn more about how to maximise your investment in
geographical information and GIS. You can visit the
showcase exhibition featuring leading companies in
today’s GI industry. You can also Benefit from free
hands-on training sessions.

Regional Accounts
Charlotte Richards ONS
Regional Accounts publish two annual releases,
Regional Gross Value Added (GVA) and Regional
Gross Disposable Household Income (GDHI).
The latest estimates of each are available on the ONS
website:
http://tinyurl.com/cxcll8c
Interactive maps that display the changes in regional
GVA over time are also available. The maps are
populated with the data released in December 2011,
covering NUTS3 regions from 1997-2009. They
display GVA per head, GVA per head indices, and
GVA £m by industry. You can select a region and
industry and watch how the regional distribution of the
UK changes over the time series, and save the picture
as a jpeg to add to your webpage or report:
http://tinyurl.com/bnb3guo
The maps are accompanied by a video podcast on
YouTube, presenting the latest data:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JjZAQ_bPyY
Several articles have recently been released relating to
Regional Accounts developments: Development of a
regional measure of real Gross Value Added using a
production approach; a plan for the acceleration of
NUTS2 and NUTS3 Regional Gross Value Added
(GVA) estimates; and the results of the user feedback
survey conducted in 2011.
All methodological articles and papers can be accessed
from the following link:
http://tinyurl.com/ramethodology
If you would like to be kept up to date with future
Regional Accounts publications and developments,
please send your name and email address to
regionalaccounts@ons.gsi.gov.uk
Urban Audit update
Bill South ONS
Urban Audit is a European Commission sponsored
project which aims to provide reliable and comparative
information on selected urban areas, described as cities.
The first Urban Audit was launched as a pilot project in
1998. This pilot was successfully received so a further
two rounds of data collection followed in 2003-04 and
2006-07.
ONS, who coordinate the work on behalf of the UK,
have recently completed the latest round (Urban Audit
IV) which started in December 2009. The majority of
the UK's data has now been published on Eurostat's
website: http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/
portal/region_cities/city_urban
The website holds data from all the previous audits,
creating a comprehensive time series. Its functionality
enables users to choose and compare areas and variables
in order to conduct their own analyses. It also has an
excellent tutorial section which demonstrates the best
way for users to extract their chosen data.
In March 2012 ONS published an article which explores
some of the Urban Audit IV data for 12 large cities in
the UK compared against a selection of other European
cities – topics include demography, climate, and crime.
The purpose of the article was to highlight the variety of
the data published, and to explore some aspects of the
quality of life experienced in these cities. The article,
together with all the data that had been published on the
Eurostat website as at 8 March 2012, can be found here:
http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/regional-analysis/urban-
audit/urban-audit-iv---united-kingdom-cities-compared-
with-other-european-cities---march-2012/article-urban-
audit-iv.html
The latest round of data collection (Urban Audit V)
started in April 2012. Some significant changes for
UAV have been introduced following Eurostat's review
of Urban Audit:
• simplified data collection structure, with the aim of
producing more timely data
• revised list of variables, with increased focus on EU
policy relevance and availability of data
• revised list of 'cities' (there will now be 131 in the
UK)
• all variables will be collected for all 'cities' (i.e. there
will no longer be 2 tiers of 'cities')
• an increased focus on promotion
For further information email UrbanAudit@ons.gov.uk

BURISA 191 page 17 March 2012
BURISA 192 page 17
Rough Sleeping Statistics
Andrew Presland, Department for
Communities and Local Government
Abstract
Information on the number of rough sleepers in each
local housing authority area in England is collected by
DCLG each Autumn. This note summarises the
background to the figures and the latest data.
Introduction
Only a small percentage of the total number of people
who might be regarded as homeless are, in fact, not
living under a roof at any given moment. In terms of
Government statistics, such people are regarded as
rough sleepers. They are defined as:
People sleeping, about to bed down (sitting on/in or
standing next to their bedding) or actually bedded
down in the open air (such as on the streets, in
tents, doorways, parks, bus shelters or encampments).
People in buildings or other places not designed for
habitation (such as stairwells, barns, sheds, car parks,
cars, derelict boats, stations, or "bashes").
To indicate the orders of magnitudes involved, there
were estimated to be just over 2,000 people sleeping
rough in England on any particular night in Autumn
2011, compared with almost 49,000 households living in
temporary accommodation at 31 December 2011 and an
unknown number of people regarded as ‘hidden
homeless’, such as ‘sofa surfers’, staying with family or
friends.
Whilst rough sleepers are inherently difficult to count,
the DCLG (and predecessors) has been working with
local authorities since the 1990s to try to produce robust
estimates of the numbers involved. The public debate on
this issue over recent years is described on page 22
onwards of a House of Commons Library note which is
available at www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/
SN02007.pdf.
The current method of counting rough sleepers uses
guidance issued in 2010 following a public consultation
on the method of calculation. It is available at http://
www.communities.gov.uk/documents/housing/pdf/
1713784.pdf and has so far been used by local
authorities for carrying out counts and providing robust
estimates twice: for Autumn 2010 and Autumn 2011.
One key difference is that only local authorities in
presumed ‘hot spot’ areas (about 70 areas) were
previously required to conduct an official count,
whereas all local authorities are now expected to either
conduct a count or make an estimate.
The key points from the latest statistical release are:
• The Autumn 2011 total of rough sleeping counts
and estimates in England was 2,181, up 23% from the
Autumn 2010 (of 1,768).
• All 326 local housing authorities in England
provided figures. 53 local authorities carried out a count
and the other 273 provided estimates.
Within each government region, there is wide variation
in the concentration of rough sleepers within each local
authority area, for which figures are also published.
There is a clear geographical pattern at regional level,
with the rates per thousand households being greater in
the south of England than in the north.
The release includes a breakdown by nationality of
rough sleepers in London in 2010-11, as recorded on the
Combined Homelessness and Information Network
(CHAIN) database by London-based homeless charity
Broadway. This showed that a total of 3,975 rough
sleepers were contacted by outreach workers or building
based teams in London in 2010-11. Of these, 1,744
rough sleepers in London were recorded as having
United Kingdom as their nationality. This group
represents just under half (48%) of the 3,607 rough
sleepers for whom nationality information was available.
28% were from Central and Eastern European countries
that joined the EU in 2004 or 2007. Latest figures from
CHAIN are published at http://broadway.jamkit.com/
CHAIN/Reports.
Data quality
Local authorities providing estimates are asked to
provide details of agencies that have been consulted in
deriving the estimate. 97% of authorities that provided
estimates reported that they had consulted with at least
one type of local agency. Of the 266 authorities that
consulted in this way, the numbers consulting with
particular types of agency were, in descending order:
Voluntary sector 228
Police 205
Outreach workers 187
Faith groups 153
Substance misuse agencies 144
Mental health agencies 128
Drugs and alcohol treatment teams 98
Local residents/businesses 77
Looking ahead
The next statistics to be published will be for counts and
estimates made this Autumn. More details will be
announced in due course. Among other things, DCLG
statisticians will assess whether the figures are robust
enough for the current ‘experimental’ official statistics
label to be dropped.

British Society for Population Studies Annual Conference 2012
Monday 10 - Wednesday 12 September 2012, The University of
Nottingham
The 2012 BSPS Conference will be held at the University of Nottingham from
10-12 September. All Conference sessions will be held on site, where
Conference catering and accommodation will also be available at very
reasonable rates. Booking forms will be available from early June, together with
a provisional timetable. Access the BSPS website for further details at:
http://www2.lse.ac.uk/socialPolicy/BSPS/annualConference/2012/Home.aspx
There will be a full programme of simultaneous strand sessions of submitted
papers. Strand headings are: ageing; census issues; families and households;
fertility; kin and fertility; health and mortality; historical demography; the life
course; local government and planning; longitudinal studies; methods, models
and projections (including qualitative & mixed-methods research in population
studies; migration.
Some sessions within strands have been suggested and these will be organised
by the person named as session organiser, within an overall strand. Sessions
within strands are shown beneath the overall strand title.
Training sessions: Proposed training sessions include: life health expectancy;
longitudinal studies; sex ratios; migration. Plus an update on last year’s training
session aimed at those working in local authorities. See the website for updates.
There will be two plenary sessions:
•! Professor Peter McDonald (Australian National University & President
of the IUSSP), provisionally entitled A century of population studies,
society and Population Studies’ Societies.
•! A double plenary, 90 minute session on the 2011 Census and its quality
with two speakers and 30 minutes for questions and discussion:
Professor Danny Dorling (University of Sheffield), on Can we trust the
2011 one number?
Glen Watson (ONS Census Director)

Statsusernet now live
BURISA is represented on the RSS Statistics User
Forum which meets three or four times a year as an
interface between users and suppliers of statistics.
The Forum has been developing a social networking
website to facilitate communication between users and
with suppliers of statistics, their analysis and
interpretation.
StatsUserNet is the Royal Statistical Society’s new
interactive site for users of official statistics. It
enables you to join on-line communities for your areas
of interest, and even create your own. You can:
• Keep up-to-date, and update others, with
developments in your areas of interest
• Ask questions – other members may be able to help
• Participate in and start discussions
• Share resources such as useful documents and
presentations
• Connect with other members who share your
interests
• Comment on key official statistics publications
• Feed back on plans for official statistics
The site depends on an active community, so please
use it to participate in discussions, share resources and
connect with other members.
Getting started
Registration
Registering allows you to join communities of interest
to you. You can then join discussions, upload
documents and contact other members. Registration is
very simple:
• Click ‘login to see members only content’ at the top
right of your screen
• Create an account by entering the required details
You will then be taken to the terms and conditions for
use of the site. Please read these carefully. If you agree
to them, you will be logged in automatically.
The homepage (www.statsusernet.org.uk)
This is your entry point, and has menus to navigate
around the site. As well as providing information
of broad interest to StatsUserNet members, the
homepage also consolidates content from the
various communities (areas of the site covering a
particular topic), such as latest discussions and latest
shared files.
The section ‘Statistics in the Spotlight’ highlights
some of the highest profile official statistics
publications. Once signed in, you can comment on
these by clicking ‘more’ and adding a comment
towards the bottom of the page.
Find a community that interests you!
A community is an area of the site which contains
information about a particular topic, and allows
members to discuss, ask questions, share files and
keep up-to-date with their subject area. At the
moment the site is in its early stages of development,
so you may not yet find one that covers your area of
interest. We are always looking for ideas for new
communities, so please get in touch by emailing
statsusernet@rss.org.uk, or by calling 020 7614 3917
The easiest way to navigate around the site is by using
the menus. Under ‘Communities’, clicking ‘View all
communities’ takes you to a list of all the available
communities on the site.
• Click the ‘Join’ button
• After clicking ‘ok’ you will be asked how you would
like to receive updates. We recommend that you select
‘Daily Digest’. This way, you will receive a neatly
packaged daily update of your community’s discussion
activities by email, and you can also reply by email.
You can opt out of receiving emails by checking the
relevant box.
• Follow the on-screen instructions and you will be
taken to the community page.
Once you have signed up and joined a community, you
will see the community homepage. The grey
tabs allow you to navigate between the various part of
the community – discussions, library, blogs and
events.
Two key features are the discussion forum and the
resource library.
BURISA website
The BURISA website is
www.burisa.org.uk
The site includes in contact details for the BURISA
Editorial Board details of forthcoming events and
conference slides and back copies of the Newsletter
and other archive material.
Please email Jenny Boag with any updates for posting
on the website.
webmaster@burisa.org.uk

BURISA?
BURISA is an association for people with an
interest in the development, management and
use of information supporting services to the
public. It covers planning, housing, health and
many more fields in government and other
public services as well as the academic and
commercial worlds.
BURISA aims to promote good practice in the
development and application of information
systems; and to improve communications
between information analysts, policy-makers
and other information users at national, regional
and local levels. It seeks to achieve these aims
through its newsletter, website, conferences and
workshops.
The association’s interests include the Census,
demography, surveys, administrative data
sources, geographical information systems,
research methods, projections, forecasting and
data visualisation.
Formed in 1972, BURISA is an informal, non
profit making unincorporated association with
its own constitution. It continues to be
innovative and active, led by a Board, which
meets regularly. BURISA is affiliated to the Royal
Statistical Society through the Statistics User
Forum..
BURISA ISSN 1369-1848
What is
BURISA Board
Chair: Mike Haslam chair@burisa.org.uk
Vice chair: Michelle von Ahn michelle.vonahn@burisa.org.uk
Secretary: Mark Pearson secretary@burisa.org.uk
Business Manager: Mike Marlow business_manager@burisa.org.uk
Editor: Cedric Knipe editor@burisa.org.uk
Subscriptions Manager Keith Donaldson subscriptions_manager@burisa.org.uk
Jenny Boag, Falkirk Council; Alan Lodwick; Keith Dugmore, Demographic Decisions; Pete Lee, Office for National Statistics;
Clare Hadley, Ordnance Survey; Denise Lievesley; Dr John Shepherd, Department of Geography, Birkbeck College; Ed
Swires-Hennessy; Nicola Underdown; Keith R Woodhead; Sarah Hardwick, Steve Denman,John Garnsworthy
BURISA contributions and publication timetable
We welcome contributions in a variety of formats: “newsy” paragraphs; full-length articles (about 2,000 - 2,500 words);
conference reports and calls for papers; project outlines and updates; recent publications; and letters responding to previous
articles or highlighting issues of interest to our readership. Please send all contributions to the Editor.
for BURISA No 193 September 2012 copy deadline is 10th August 2012
for BURISA No 194 December 2012 copy deadline is 9th November 2012
All articles are the responsibility of the author(s). The inclusion of any article does not imply
endorsement, by BURISA or any of the organisations represented on the Board, of the views or
opinions expressed, nor of the methodology.
BURISA Website: www.burisa.org.uk Webmaster: webmaster@burisa.org.uk
8

BURISA News Issue 192

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