geo_hierarchy: Geography hierarchy lookup

In dfeR: Common Department for Education Analysis Tasks

Geography hierarchy lookup

Description

A lookup showing the hierarchy of ward to Westminster parliamentary constituency to local authority district to local authority to combined mayoral authority to region to country for years 2017, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025.

Usage

geo_hierarchy

Format

geo_hierarchy

A data frame with 26,057 rows and 17 columns:

first_available_year_included

First year in the lookups that we see this location

most_recent_year_included

Last year in the lookups that we see this location

ward_name

Ward name

pcon_name

Parliamentary constituency name

lad_name

Local authority district name

la_name

Local authority name

english_devolved_area_name

Mayoral authority name

region_name

Region name

country_code

Country name

ward_code

9 digit ward code

pcon_code

9 digit westminster constituency code

lad_code

9 digit local authority district code

old_la_code

old 3 digit local authority code

new_la_code

9 digit local authority code

english_devolved_area_code

9 digit combined authority code

region_code

9 digit region code

country_code

9 digit country code

Details

Note that combined mayoral authorities only exist in England, and we use english_devolved_area_name and english_devolved_area_code to refer to mayoral authorities in line with the standards set in DfE official statistics. Greater London Authority is not included in the ONS combined authority lookup, we have added that in for all local authority districts with codes that start with E090....

Changes we've made to the original lookup:

1. The original lookup from ONS uses the Upper Tier Local Authority, we then update this so that where there is a metropolitan local authority we use the local authority district as the local authority to match how DfE publish data for local authorities.

2. We have noticed that in the 2017 version, the Glasgow East constituency had a code of S1400030 instead of the usual S14000030, we've assumed this was an error and have change this in our data so that Glasgow East is S14000030 in 2017.

3. We have joined on regions using the Ward to LAD to County to Region file.

4. We have joined on countries based on the E / N / S / W at the start of codes.

5. Scotland had no published regions in 2017, so given the rest of the years have Scotland as the region, we've forced that in for 2017 too to complete the data set.

6. We've added the Greater London Authority as the overarching mayoral authority (English devolved area) for all Local authority districts with codes that start E090....

Source

https://geoportal.statistics.gov.uk/search?tags=lup_wd_pcon_lad_utla https://geoportal.statistics.gov.uk/search?q=lup_wd_lad_cty_rgn_gor_ctry https://geoportal.statistics.gov.uk/search?tags=LUP_LAD_CAUTH https://get-information-schools.service.gov.uk/Guidance/LaNameCodes and https://tinyurl.com/EESScreenerLAs

dfeR documentation built on Sept. 24, 2026, 1:07 a.m.