Methodology
Page last reviewed: 4 May 2026
What this site is
Compare My Area is a data publication, not a scraper of third-party websites. We ingest official open datasets published under licence by UK government bodies and regulators, normalise them into a single database, and compute comparable statistics for each place we cover. The rankings and charts you see are outputs of that pipeline; we do not copy tables from blogs or estate agents.
How we define a place
Each “town” or area is a defined geography from national statistics, not an arbitrary radius on a map:
- England and Wales — ONS Built-Up Areas (BUA) 2024, matched to population and postcode-derived centroids.
- Scotland — National Records of Scotland settlement boundaries and population, aligned to official settlement statistics.
- Northern Ireland — settlement extents from open government spatial data (e.g. OpenDataNI), treated consistently with the rest of the pipeline.
Using standard geographies means our numbers stay comparable across places and over time, even though real-world settlement edges are never perfect.
Dataset snapshot on this site
Figures on the live site reflect our latest processed export (5 May 2026).
Upstream publishers release data on their own schedules (monthly, quarterly, or ad hoc). We refresh our imports when new official files are available and we have completed QA; the date above is when we last cut a full export for the website.
Where each dataset comes from
Below is the authoritative list of sources behind the metrics on Compare My Area. Unless noted, material is used under the Open Government Licence v3.0 (OGL).
House prices and trends
Sources: HM Land Registry Price Paid Data; UK House Price Index (including Scotland property-type breakdowns where applicable).
Typical refresh: Land Registry and UK HPI are updated regularly by HM Land Registry / Registers of Scotland; we align to complete reporting periods for headline figures.
Why we use it: Transaction registers and official indices are the standard basis for median prices and trends; they are not estimates from listings sites.
Crime and safety
Sources: Police UK open data; Scottish Government recorded crime.
Typical refresh: Police forces publish monthly; Scotland publishes on its own cycle. There is always a short lag between an incident and its appearance in open data.
Why we use it: We use recorded crime and outcome statistics as published for those geographies, not crowd-sourced “safety scores”.
Schools and education
Sources: Department for Education; Ofsted; Estyn (Wales); Education Scotland inspection outcomes; and equivalent Northern Ireland sources (e.g. ETI) where included in our pipeline.
Typical refresh: DfE and inspectorates publish on rolling cycles; a given school’s last inspection may be several years ago — that reflects official reality, not a gap in our site.
Why we use it: Inspection outcomes and official rolls are comparable across schools that fall within our area definitions; we do not rank on parent forums or league tables from newspapers.
Broadband and connectivity
Sources: Ofcom Connected Nations.
Typical refresh: Ofcom typically publishes Connected Nations annually with methodology notes.
Why we use it: Regulator-collected coverage statistics are more consistent than speed tests from individual households.
Energy performance (EPCs)
Sources: EPC Register open data (Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities).
Typical refresh: EPC data is updated as certificates are lodged; aggregation by area can lag individual lodgements.
Why we use it: We summarise certificates that fall within each area’s boundary — the same register used for conveyancing and policy.
Demographics and context
Sources: ONS Census 2021; Nomis and related ONS open outputs for small-area statistics where used.
Typical refresh: Census outputs are stable between censuses; interim estimates may be added when we integrate them.
Why we use it: Census-based figures give a consistent baseline for population structure across the UK.
Why our comparisons are trustworthy
- Provenance — Every metric traces to a named official dataset and licence, not to opaque crawling or user-generated content.
- Consistency — The same processing rules apply everywhere we publish: equivalent definitions, fixed aggregation choices, and documented caveats (see our Terms of Use).
- Honesty about limits— Statistics describe areas in aggregate. They are not a survey of your street, your property price, or your child’s school place. Always verify material decisions with primary sources and professional advice.