Welcome to our FAQ section which we hope will answer most if not all of your questions. Please browse here and our Problems with the data section before getting in touch with any questions.
Data
What do all the crime categories mean?
- All crime
- Total for all categories.
- Anti-social behaviour
- Includes personal, environmental and nuisance anti-social behaviour.
- Bicycle theft
- Includes the taking without consent or theft of a pedal cycle.
- Burglary
- Includes offences where a person enters a house or other building with the intention of stealing.
- Criminal damage and arson
- Includes damage to buildings and vehicles and deliberate damage by fire.
- Drugs
- Includes offences related to possession, supply and production.
- Other crime
- Includes forgery, perjury and other miscellaneous crime.
- Other theft
- Includes theft by an employee, blackmail and making off without payment.
- Possession of weapons
- Includes possession of a weapon, such as a firearm or knife.
- Public disorder and weapons
- Includes offences which cause fear, alarm, distress or a possession of a weapon such as a firearm.
- Public order
- Includes offences which cause fear, alarm or distress.
- Robbery
- Includes offences where a person uses force or threat of force to steal.
- Shoplifting
- Includes theft from shops or stalls.
- Theft from the person
- Includes crimes that involve theft directly from the victim (including handbag, wallet, cash, mobile phones) but without the use or threat of physical force.
- Vehicle crime
- Includes theft from or of a vehicle or interference with a vehicle.
- Violence and sexual offences
- Includes offences against the person such as common assaults, Grievous Bodily Harm and sexual offences.
A complete mapping between Home Office Offence Codes and the Categories on Police.uk can be downloaded here
What do the abbreviated column headers on your broadband coverage data mean?
This data is from Ofcom, a snapshot of May 2018. According to Ofcom, this is what they represent;
SFBB availability (% premises) – Percentage of premises that have Superfast Broadband (30Mbit/s to less than 300Mbit/s) coverage
UFBB availability (% premises) – Percentage of premises that have Ultrafast Broadband (300Mbit/s or greater) coverage
Full Fibre availability (% premises) – Percentage of premises that have coverage from a full fibre service
% of premises unable to receive 2Mbit/s – Percentage of premises that do not have access to services above2Mbit/s
% of premises unable to receive 5Mbit/s – Percentage of premises that do not have access to services above 5Mbit/s
% of premises unable to receive 10Mbit/s – Percentage of premises that do not have access to services above 10Mbit/s
You can read more about it here.
Do you show British Transport Police data?
No, we don’t. In a typical month, like July 2019, there are approx 500k crimes and ASB incidents and only 5k BTP events. So it’s 1% of the total, not very much. The main reason we don’t show them is that crimes are always located to a railway station, regardless of where they actually happened. So even though, the crime may have happened on a train between stations it is located to the nearest station. We don’t think this gives a true and fair representation of crime in an area consistent with the other 500k crimes and ASB incidents – they are just not like for like.
In practice, see here for the difference;
We show for June https://ukcrimestats.com/Neighbourhood/8878 a total of 213.
The police.uk site shows a total of 215 https://www.police.uk/greater-manchester/AC27/crime/2019-06/ – that difference of 2 are the total number of BTP crimes, listed here https://www.police.uk/greater-manchester/AC27/crime/2019-06/1489832/ “Crime at Manchester Road Station”.
Do you have crime data in more detail and from an earlier time period?
No – we get asked this a lot – what you see is all we have. We usually advise people to contact Police Forces directly for this information.
Do you use the crime outcomes data?
No, but we might in the future.
How do you account for crimes with no location?
Crimes with no location are still given a crime category and are attached to a particular Police Force. So we include them under our National Picture page totals and under the Police Forces page. However, as there are no geo-coordinates, they are not matched to any postcodes, geospatial shapes like neighbourhoods, constituencies, LSOAs etc.
What does your property price data not show?
According to the Land Registry, it does not include;
- all commercial transactions. By this we mean any transaction that involves a transfer to a corporate body, company or business
- sales that have not been lodged with Land Registry.
- sales that were not for full market value. By this we mean, the sale of part of a property, a share of a property or the sale of a property at a discount. Examples include a repossession sale or a transfer between parties on divorce
- transfers, conveyances, assignments or leases at a premium with nominal rent which are:
- ‘Right to buy’ sales at a discount
- subject to a lease
- subject to an existing mortgage
- buy to let (where they can be identified by a mortgage deed)
- to effect the sale of a share in a property
- by way of a gift
- under a compulsory purchase order
- under a court order
- to Trustees appointed under Deed of appointment
- Vesting Deeds Transmissions or Assents of more than one property
- Leases for seven years or less
Why are your LSOA matchings slightly different to Police.uk?
First of all, we started matching crime locations to Lower Layer Super Output Areas (and all other shapes) some time before Police.uk released this data ready matched to LSOAs. Our chosen methodology at the time was to match all crimes to within the boundaries of every shape – including LSOA. Sometimes, a crime’s location may fall almost exactly on the dividing line between 2 LSOAs, typically in the middle of a street. In our case, we have always matched it the side of the boundary it falls on. Police.uk use a different methodology – in that scenario they match it to the LSOA with the nearest centre point of the LSOA. As all crime is semi-anonymised in its location, we consider neither approach to be more accurate than the other. For consistency, we use this system across all of the geospatial shapes. In any event, they are small difference – for example a monthly total under one system could be 723 and 717 for another, like here http://ukcrimestats.com/LSOA/E01033658.