Maps of rural areas in England (Census 2001).
Defra statistics: rural
Email mailto:rural.statistics@defra.gov.uk">rural.statistics@defra.gov.uk
<p class="govuk-body">You can also contact us via Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/DefraStats" class="govuk-link">https://twitter.com/DefraStats</a></p>
A compendium of housing statistics for Rural and Urban areas in England.
The June 2025 release of the Digest includes analysis updates for the following topics within this theme:
The supplementary data tables provide additional statistics for each section of the Digest, using the Rural-Urban Classification categories. The Local Authority data tables supply the disaggregated datasets, used to conduct analysis in the Digest, at a Local Authority level where feasible.
Defra statistics: rural
Email mailto:rural.statistics@defra.gov.uk">rural.statistics@defra.gov.uk
<p class="govuk-body">You can also contact us via Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/DefraStats" class="govuk-link">https://twitter.com/DefraStats</a></p>
Copies of the Housing Statistics for Rural England publication are available from the National Archive.
https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20250611155806/https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/housing-statistics-for-rural-england" class="govuk-link">Housing Statistics for Rural England, 10 December 2024
https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20240716154306/https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/housing-statistics-for-rural-england" class="govuk-link">Housing Statistics for Rural England, 16 July 2024
https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20240312163842/https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/housing-statistics-for-rural-england" class="govuk-link">Housing Statistics for Rural England, 12 March 2024
https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20240213162657/https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/housing-statistics-for-rural-england" class="govuk-link">Housing Statistics for Rural England, 13 February 2024
https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20231114164346/https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/housing-statistics-for-rural-england" class="govuk-link">Housing Statistics for Rural England, 14 November 2023
https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20230815152345/https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/housing-statistics-for-rural-england" class="govuk-link">Housing Statistics for Rural England, 15 August 2023
https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20230420154325/https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/housing-statistics-for-rural-england" class="govuk-link">Housing Statistics for Rural England, 20 April 2023
https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20230314171330/https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/housing-statistics-for-rural-england" class="govuk-link">Housing Statistics for Rural England, 14 March 2023
Statistics up to 2022 can be found https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20230208015303/https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/statistical-digest-of-rural-england" class="govuk-link">here.
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United Kingdom UK: Rural Land Area data was reported at 183,648.922 sq km in 2010. This stayed constant from the previous number of 183,648.922 sq km for 2000. United Kingdom UK: Rural Land Area data is updated yearly, averaging 183,648.922 sq km from Dec 1990 (Median) to 2010, with 3 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 183,648.922 sq km in 2010 and a record low of 183,648.922 sq km in 2010. United Kingdom UK: Rural Land Area data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by World Bank. The data is categorized under Global Database’s United Kingdom – Table UK.World Bank.WDI: Land Use, Protected Areas and National Wealth. Rural land area in square kilometers, derived from urban extent grids which distinguish urban and rural areas based on a combination of population counts (persons), settlement points, and the presence of Nighttime Lights. Areas are defined as urban where contiguous lighted cells from the Nighttime Lights or approximated urban extents based on buffered settlement points for which the total population is greater than 5,000 persons.; ; Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN)/Columbia University. 2013. Urban-Rural Population and Land Area Estimates Version 2. Palisades, NY: NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC). http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/data/set/lecz-urban-rural-population-land-area-estimates-v2.; Sum;
This file provides a rural-urban view of 2021 Output Areas (OA) in England and Wales. OAs are the base level of geography for the 2021 RUC, and the category assigned to each OA informs the classification for all higher-level geographies (LSOA, MSOA and LAD). The 2021 RUC is a statistical classification to provide a consistent and standardised method for classifying geographies as rural or urban. This is based on address density, physical settlement form, population size, and Relative Access to Major towns and cities (populations of over 75,000 people). The classification is produced by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) with advice from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), the Welsh Government and colleagues from the Government Geography Profession (GGP).
OAs are defined as ‘Urban’ if they have a high density of residential addresses, or if they intersect with Amalgamated Built Up Areas (ABUAs) with a resident population of 10,000 or more. ABUAs are Built Up Areas (BUAs) within 200m of one another and with a direct road connection, representing larger conurbations. OAs that intersect with ABUAs with populations less than 10,000 or that have lower densities of addresses, are assigned to the two ‘Rural’ Categories (‘Larger Rural’ and ‘Smaller Rural’).
In 2023, the urban population of the United Kingdom was approximately 57.6 million, while the rural population was around 10.5 million.
This statistic shows broadband coverage in rural areas of the United Kingdom (UK) from 2013 to 2018, by broadband technology type. As of 2018, 86.2 percent of rural areas had access to DSL broadband technologies, while only 3.1 percent had access to standard cable technology.
Open Government Licence 3.0http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/
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(File Size - 5 KB). The 2011 rural-urban classification (RUC) of counties in England is based on the 2011 RUC of Output Areas (OA) published in August 2013, and allows users to create a rural/urban view of county level products. The classification was produced by the University of Sheffield and was sponsored by a cross-Government working group comprising Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Department of the Communities and Local Government and Office for National Statistics.
The Rural Services Series monitors trends in access to services. This analysis uses the road network to provide the distances from each Output Area to each service. These figures give a measure of the availability of a service based on distance to that service. It does not factor in transportation options or cost elements which may affect usage of particular services.
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This file is in an <a href="https://www.gov.uk/guidance/using-open-document-formats-odf-in-your-organisation" target="_self" class="govuk-link">OpenDocument</a> format
<p class="gem-c-attachment_metadata"><span class="gem-c-attachment_attribute"><abbr title="OpenDocument Spreadsheet" class="gem-c-attachment_abbr">ODS</abbr></span>, <span class="gem-c-attachment_attribute">12.7 MB</span></p>
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This file is in an <a href="https://www.gov.uk/guidance/using-open-document-formats-odf-in-your-organisation" target="_self" class="govuk-link">OpenDocument</a> format
Indicators:
percentage of people that live within a certain distance from a range of services
minimum distance from each Output Area to each service
Data source: There are various data sources - see metadata statement in the excel spreadsheet for details for each service that has been analysed.
Coverage: England
Rural classification used: Office for National Statistics Rural Urban Classification 2001
For further information please contact:
rural.statistics@defra.gsi.gov.uk
http://www.twitter.com/@defrastats" title="@DefraStats" class="govuk-link">Twitter@D
This statistic shows the average urban, suburban and rural download speeds in the United Kingdom (UK) in November 2015. For urban areas, the average download speed was 50.5 Mbit/s, compared to only 13.7 Mbit/s in rural areas.
This dataset is published as Open DataThe Scottish Government (SG) Urban Rural Classification provides a consistent way of defining urban and rural areas across Scotland. The classification aids policy development and the understanding of issues facing urban, rural and remote communities. It is based upon two main criteria: (i) population as defined by National Records of Scotland (NRS), and (ii) accessibility based on drive time analysis to differentiate between accessible and remote areas in Scotland. The classification can be analysed in a two, three, six or eight fold form. The two-fold classification simply distinguishes between urban and rural areas through two categories, urban and rural, while the three-fold classification splits the rural category between accessible and remote. Most commonly used is the 6-fold classification which distinguishes between urban, rural, and remote areas through six categories. The 8-fold classification further distinguishes between remote and very remote regions. The Classification is normally updated on a biennial basis, with the current dataset reflective of the year 2020. Data for previous versions are available for download in ESRI Shapefile format.
Open Government Licence 3.0http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/
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Average weekly household expenditure on goods and services in the UK. Data are shown by region, age, income (including equivalised) group (deciles and quintiles), economic status, socio-economic class, housing tenure, output area classification, urban and rural areas (Great Britain only), place of purchase and household composition.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/methodology/geography/licenceshttps://www.ons.gov.uk/methodology/geography/licences
This file provides a rural-urban view of 2001 Lower Layer Super Output Areas (LSOA) in England and Wales. The ZIP file contains the Rural Urban Classification in XLSX and CSV format and includes a user guide. The files were originally from the NeSS website. Click on the Download button to download the ZIP file.The classification of rural and urban areas is the outcome of a project co-sponsored by:Office for National Statistics (ONS);Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra);Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (now Communities and Local Government);Countryside Agency (CA); andNational Assembly for Wales (NAW).The classification was developed in 2004 by a consortium co-ordinated by Prof. John Shepherd from Birkbeck College. The technical work was lead by Peter Bibby of University of Sheffield and the project also involved the University of Glamorgan and Geowise. The rural and urban classification of Output Areas, Super Output Areas (this dataset) and Wards has been provided to enable datasets to be analysed according to the classification. This provides a powerful tool for the development and monitoring of rural and urban policies.Please Note: Super Output Areas do not have all the same codes as the OA level Dataset. For SOAs and Wards the classifications for ‘Villages, Hamlets and Isolated Dwellings’ have been combined.Similar procedures to those used to classify Output Areas apply to the classification for the 34,378 Lower Layer Super Output Areas in the dataset. However the morphological classification differs in the number of categories as very few LSOAs can be classified as predominantly dispersed settlements. LSOAs are categorised into just three domains: urban 10k, town and fringe and villages, hamlets and isolated dwellings, using the key below:2005 Rural and Urban morphology indicator1 - denotes predominantly urban >10k2 - denotes predominantly town and fringe3 - denotes other rural (including village, hamlet and isolated dwellings)2005 Rural and Urban context indicator0 - denotes less sparsely populated areas1 - denotes sparsely populated areas
Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 (CC BY-NC 4.0)https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
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Forecast: Average Number of Rooms Per Person in Rural Areas in the UK 2024 - 2028 Discover more data with ReportLinker!
A compendium of communities and households statistics for Rural and Urban areas in England.
The May 2025 release of the Communities and Households Digest includes analysis updates for the following topic within this theme:
The supplementary data tables provide additional statistics for each section of the Digest, using the Rural-Urban Classification categories. The Local Authority data tables supply the disaggregated datasets, used to conduct analysis in the Digest, at a Local Authority level where feasible.
Defra statistics: rural
Email mailto:rural.statistics@defra.gov.uk">rural.statistics@defra.gov.uk
<p class="govuk-body">You can also contact us via Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/DefraStats" class="govuk-link">https://twitter.com/DefraStats</a></p>
Copies of the Communities and Households Statistics for Rural England publication are available from the National Archive.
https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20250513205557/https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/communities-and-households-statistics-for-rural-england" class="govuk-link">Communities and Households Statistics for Rural England, 11 February 2025
https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20241015153014/https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/communities-and-households-statistics-for-rural-england" class="govuk-link">Communities and Households Statistics for Rural England, 15 October 2024
https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20240910153034/https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/communities-and-households-statistics-for-rural-england" class="govuk-link">Communities and Households Statistics for Rural England, 10 September 2024
https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20240514152753/https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/communities-and-households-statistics-for-rural-england" class="govuk-link">Communities and Households Statistics for Rural England, 14 May 2024
https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20240312163826/https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/communities-and-households-statistics-for-rural-england" class="govuk-link">Communities and Households Statistics for Rural England, 12 March 2024
https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20231102003912/https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/communities-and-households-statistics-for-rural-england" class="govuk-link">Communities and Households Statistics for Rural England, 2 November 2023
https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20230815152434/https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/communities-and-households-statistics-for-rural-england" class="govuk-link">Communities and Households Statistics for Rural England, 15 August 2023
https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20230613144457/https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/communities-and-households-statistics-for-rural-england" class="govuk-link">Communities and Households Statistics for Rural England, 13 June 2023
https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20230516152305/https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/communities-and-households-statistics-for-rural-england" class="govuk-link">Communities and Households Statistics for Rural England, 16 May 2023
https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20230314171325/https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/communities-and-households-statistics-for-rural-england" class="govuk-link">Communities and Households Statistics for Rural England, 14 March 2023
Statistics up to 2022 can be found https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20230208015303/https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/statistical-digest-of-rural-england" class="govuk-link">here.
Economic activity indicators showing the employment status and working patterns of people living in urban and rural areas.
These documents are part of the larger compendium publication the Statistical Digest of Rural England, a collection of rural statistics on a wide range of social and economic government policy areas. The statistics allow comparisons between the different rural and urban area classifications.
Indicators:
Data source: Office for National Statistics (ONS) Annual Business Inquiry (ABI)
Coverage: England
Rural classification used: Office for National Statistics Rural Urban Classification
Next release date: tbc
Defra statistics: rural
Email mailto:rural.statistics@defra.gov.uk">rural.statistics@defra.gov.uk
<p class="govuk-body">You can also contact us via Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/DefraStats" class="govuk-link">https://twitter.com/DefraStats</a></p>
The project aimed to thoroughly examine the rural geographies of gentrification in France, the UK, and the USA through a comparative study of its theory, forms, and dynamics. It sought to determine whether rural gentrification could be used as a concept to explain changes in rural areas in these countries. he project began by using the concept of "sociologies of translation" to understand how the term "rural gentrification" was used in academic, policy, and popular discourses in the past and present in these countries. To identify the presence and use of social assets within rural gentrification, an asset-based theory was developed. National datasets were mapped using empirical indicators and comparable measures of rural, urban, and peri-urban spaces to analyse the geographies of gentrification in these countries and develop a typology of rural gentrification. The archive consists of the UK element of the International Rural Gentrification (iRGENT) project The dataset contains material from a questionnaire survey conducted in 9 villages, located in 6 local authority Districts in England
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United Kingdom UK: Rural Population Growth data was reported at -0.865 % in 2017. This records a decrease from the previous number of -0.794 % for 2016. United Kingdom UK: Rural Population Growth data is updated yearly, averaging -0.024 % from Dec 1960 (Median) to 2017, with 58 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 1.480 % in 1962 and a record low of -0.979 % in 2002. United Kingdom UK: Rural Population Growth data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by World Bank. The data is categorized under Global Database’s United Kingdom – Table UK.World Bank.WDI: Population and Urbanization Statistics. Rural population refers to people living in rural areas as defined by national statistical offices. It is calculated as the difference between total population and urban population.; ; World Bank staff estimates based on the United Nations Population Division's World Urbanization Prospects: 2018 Revision.; Weighted average;
Open Government Licence 3.0http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/
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How people feel about their neighbourhood across the UK. This dataset shows how people feel about their neighbourhood by looking at 5 measures of social capital and shows differences observed between regions,constituent countries and urban and rural areas by age
https://www.ons.gov.uk/methodology/geography/licenceshttps://www.ons.gov.uk/methodology/geography/licences
The Rural-Urban Classification is a Government Statistical Service product developed by the Office for National Statistics; the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs; and the Welsh Assembly Government.Source: Office for National Statistics licensed under the Open Government Licence v.3.0.Contains OS data © Crown copyright 2025Links below to FAQ, Methodology and User GuideFAQ https://geoportal.statistics.gov.uk/documents/f359d48424664a1584dca319f3dac97f/aboutMethodology https://geoportal.statistics.gov.uk/documents/833a35f2a1ec49d98466b679ae0a0646/aboutUser Guide https://geoportal.statistics.gov.uk/documents/c8e8e6db38e04cb8937569d74bce277a/about
This statistic illustrates the average download sync speeds in megabit per second (Mbit/s) in rural and urban areas in England in 2019. In 2019, the average download sync speed in urban areas was 64 Mbit/s.
Maps of rural areas in England (Census 2001).
Defra statistics: rural
Email mailto:rural.statistics@defra.gov.uk">rural.statistics@defra.gov.uk
<p class="govuk-body">You can also contact us via Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/DefraStats" class="govuk-link">https://twitter.com/DefraStats</a></p>