Understanding towns in England and Wales

The ONS has released data on towns across England and Wales. A number of variables relating to small towns. A number of posts will be released looking at the data to see what points emerge and the implications of these.

Notes

This article analyses data for 1,395 towns and cities in England and Wales with a population greater than 5,000 people, using the built-up areas (BUAs) 2024 geography. It develops on our previous Understanding towns articles.

To help understand the data, three classifications have been calculated for each town to enable us to group together towns that share some similar characteristics. Two of these classifications were used in previous

Understanding towns articles, namely job density class (working or residential) and income deprivation measures (higher or lower deprivation). Having developed this two-part categorisation, we now include a "nearer" or "further" categorisation based on relative access derived from the 2021 Rural Urban Classification (RUC) methodology. This represents whether a town is within 30 minutes' drive of a town of at least 75,000 people (nearer) or not (further). This is a proxy for access to the wider goods, services and employment opportunities offered by major towns and cities. [ONS].

Source: Office for National Statistics (ONS), released 15 May 2026, ONS website, article, Understanding towns in England and Wales, investigating socioeconomic trends: May 2026.