Geographic policy

ONS Geography policy provides a geographic referencing framework to enable the production of accurate and consistent statistics. Our policy:

• provides a single definitive source of geographic information (GI) and metadata
  
• provides advice and best practice guidance on using GI data, and GIS tools and software to reference, analyse, and present statistics
  
• leads on initiatives across the GSS, central government and beyond, to harmonise the use of GI in the production of statistics

• Best practice guidance

  Information on a standard approach to the use of geography in statistics

• Gridlink®

  The brand name for a harmonised method of allocating unit postcodes to geographic areas

• Geographic Referencing Infrastructure (GRI)

  Providing ONS with the geographic referencing (georeferencing) infrastructure (GRI) to support world-class statistics

• Coding and Naming for Statistical Geographies

  ONS went live with new codes on 1 January 2011. ONS Geography have been using the new codes in parallel with the old codes since 1 January 2010.