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West Lothian - Geography

Also in this section: Population | Settlement Populations | | Population Projections | Local Plan

Geographic boundaries used to present data

The information on this site is presented using a number of different geographic boundaries. The standard geography used in most cases are the datazones used by the Scottish Government (see below). Some information has not yet been released at this level, either because it has not yet been re-coded or is too sensitive to release for such small areas. If this is the case it is shown for zone clusters, such as intermediate zones or larger areas such as multi-member wards, local authorities or health & care partnership areas. We also receive crime data from the police by beat. The West Lothian beats have been re-organised to match the Multi-Member Wards so the data has been re-mapped & re-posted to the databank.

Datazones

Most of the information on the site is presented by Datazone (a geography introduced by the Scottish Government for deprivation mapping). There are 6505 datazones in Scotland and 211 in West Lothian. Each zone has an average population of 750. At a local level the numbered zones have been named & grouped to match to local settlements (as closely as possible). The zones were intended to provide a set of stable boundaries for statistical mapping.

In areas such as West Lothian where the population is growing, there will inevitably have to be changes to the datazone boundaries. Each datazone initially had an average population of 750, but in some datazones the population has already increased significantly since they were created. However, the Scottish Government have stated that it is not likely that any changes will take place before the next census in 2011.

The zones were initially issued for use with the Scottish Deprivation Index (SIMD), but now form the main basis for issuing small area statistics about benefits, education, health and the labour market etc. via the Scottish Neighbourhood Statistics website.

In West Lothian the data which is now available for each datazone has been used to inform the locality planning process, as it was possible to select the datazones which lie within each school catchment (and subsequently within each of the multi-member wards).

This site will be extended to use these boundaries as appropriate to publish data on a range of local and national indicators.

• Data for the 211 Datazones in West Lothian (there are 6505 in Scotland each with an average population 750).
• Data for the 9 Multi-Member wards in West Lothian (there are 353 in Scotland).
• Data for Scotland and the 32 local authorities.
• Data for the 40 Health & Care Partnerships & 14 Health Boards
• Data for 34 Intermediate Zones in West Lothian (there are 1235 in Scotland, with an average population 2500-6000).

Census Geography

The information in the census profiles is presented by datazone, ward, school catchment or settlement but when the Census took place in 2001 neither datazones nor multi-member wards existed. However, as census data is provided for small census 'output areas' each of which has approximately 125 households (created from groups of postcodes), it is possible to match these to new areas.

There are 1238 output areas in West Lothian and the Scottish Government have provided a lookup table which matches output areas to datazones, and datazones to the new multi-member wards. We have therefore used these lookup tables to group the Census data and to construct the profiles (the settlement and catchment profiles are based on the matched groups of datazones used for locality planning in West Lothian).

Website maintained by West Lothian Council
Contact 01506-775724