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.
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