Some information about the data we use

OpenStreetMap is built by a community of mappers that contribute and maintain data about roads, trails, cafés, railway stations, and much more, all over the world. Locatio uses this to show local amenities.

It’s only as complete as its local mapping, so a well-mapped area can look better served than an equally good one that isn’t.

Established in 1791, Ordnance Survey creates, maintains and distributes detailed location information for Great Britain. Locatio uses their green space data and their structured road mapping.

We use this in conjunction with OpenStreetMap data to get a more rounded picture. A road’s type tells us how busy it’s likely to be, not actually how busy any given road is. We also work out from their road network which roads don’t lead anywhere else. That’s a reading of the map, not a survey: it knows nothing of bollards, gates or width limits.

The Environment Agency’s Flood Zone data, showing the extent of land at present day risk of flooding from rivers and the sea. The data gives an indication of flood risk to an area of land, and is not suitable for showing whether an individual property is at risk of flooding.

A zone is a starting point, not a substitute for a survey.

The progress measures aim to capture the progress that pupils make from the end of Key Stage 1 to the end of primary school. Progress 8 aims to capture the progress a pupil makes from the end of Key Stage 2 (KS2) to the end of KS4. Alongside those, we show each school’s latest Ofsted rating, in Ofsted’s own words and with the date of the inspection.

The most recent primary school progress figures are 2022/23 and 2023/24 for secondary schools, due to Covid disruption. Private schools aren’t in the progress tables at all due to data availability/consistency.

Road traffic open data provides street-level data for every junction-to-junction link on the motorway and ‘A’ road network, and for some minor roads in Great Britain. Provides annual estimates of traffic on Great Britain’s roads; broken down by vehicle type, road category and geographic area. Annual statistics are compiled using data from around 7,000 roadside 12-hour manual counts, continuous data from automatic traffic counters, and data on road lengths.

Counts measured at fixed points and mostly on main roads. Minor roads are reviewed periodically — so some counts can be a few years old, and some areas have none nearby.

Stations and stops: Transport for London’s in London, with National Rail stations added from OpenStreetMap; the national stop register, NaPTAN, in Manchester and Liverpool. London’s fare zones come from TfL too.

Price Paid Data tracks property sales in England and Wales submitted to HM Land Registry for registration. Simply, it is the public record of what homes actually sold for.

Not every street has recent sales, so some streets have no price at all. We also use it to count how often homes on each postcode have come up for sale in the last five years, and to tell what kind of home a street mostly holds — recent sales first, older ones where there are none.

Sourced from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, this is data providing floor area, build era and the kind of home, as well as information about a property’s energy use and typical energy costs (which Locatio doesn’t currently use). We use it for a street’s typical home size — which we only compare with the rest of the city where at least three certificates are of the same kind of home — and, where a street has had no sales to go on, for the kind of home too.

Not every home has a certificate, and not every sale can be matched to one — so build era, home size and price per square foot aren’t available for every street.

Locatio uses the 2021 Census to determine how many people live in each area and whether homes are privately owned or rented, or social housing. The census, together with the ONS Postcode Directory, also tells us whether a postcode has any homes at all — so an office block or a depot doesn’t read as a street with missing data. We also use the ONS monthly Price Index of Private Rents, for average rents, plus the statistical areas we sort postcodes into.

Rents are only published for whole council areas, never a neighbourhood or a street. And the census runs once a decade.

Data that describes individual crime and anti-social behaviour (ASB) incidents, including street-level location information. Note, the locations of Crime and ASB incidents always represent the approximate location of a crime — not the exact place that it happened. Greater Manchester Police don’t currently publish street-level crime data, so Manchester shows none.

Public EV charge points, sourced from the world’s largest Open Data registry of electric vehicle charging locations, volunteer run, with crowdsourced data.

It’s community-maintained, so check with the provider before relying on one.

A first look at the street, from the postcode’s perspective. Google’s Street View stitches together billions of panoramic images to provide a virtual representation of our surroundings on Google Maps. Note – it loads from Google only if you choose to open it, and then under Google’s own terms.

It loads from Google only if you choose to open it, and then under Google’s own terms.