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Policy clarifications: Lead sentences, unparished areas, and districts / settlements with the same name

Latest comment: 1 year ago49 comments14 people in discussion

In trying to improve articles for English districts and settlements, I have found three overlapping issues where I think it would be helpful to have a wider discussion on policy.

1. Lead sentences: There seems to have been a proliferation of overly-structured opening sentences to articles recently, trying to give very precise geographical hierarchies for every article about a place. Particular examples I have found and changed have included:

"Medomsley is a village and former civil parish, now in the unparished area of Consett, in the County Durham district, in the ceremonial county of Durham, England." (Now changed to "Medomsley is a village in County Durham, England.")

and

"Berechurch is an area of Colchester and former civil parish, now in the unparished area of Colchester, in the Colchester district, in the county of Essex, England." (Now changed to "Berechurch is a suburb of Colchester in Essex, England.")

I think such sentences are off-putting to readers and would suggest that we update the guidance on lead sections at WP:UKCITIES to clarify that the opening sentence of the lead should be a simple summary of the place. If a place is part of a settlement which shares the same name as its district, or part of a district / unitary authority which shares its name with the ceremonial county, keep it simple and don't repeat those names for every role they play in the hierarchy. Unparished areas and former civil parishes are overly-detailed points and do not belong in the lead (especially its first sentence), and should go further down the article in a governance or history section, if at all.

2. Unparished areas: This rather niche term crops up an awful lot, far more than I think is justified by the concept's actual significance. A large part of the problem is that I think they have been substantially misunderstood by some editors. This misunderstanding has unfortunately made its way into the guidance at Wikipedia:WikiProject UK geography/How to write about parishes, which says that unparished areas are administrative divisions to be treated similarly to civil parishes. The government, Ordnance Survey and Office for National Statistics do note that some areas are unparished, but they do not name such areas, nor do they define internal boundaries between unparished areas. All unparished areas in each district are grouped together. This differs from the approach taken by some editors here, which has been to suggest that each urban district or borough abolished in 1974 has somehow become a separate unparished area with the name and boundaries of the former urban district or borough.

This approach has led to phrases like "Hawksworth is a village and former civil parish, now in the unparished area of Aireborough, in the Leeds district..." despite Aireborough having been abolished in 1974 (indeed, it has now been abolished longer than it existed, having only been created in 1937). The same flawed logic has led to debates where it is argued that such a "named" unparished area is somehow a quasi-official definition for the place itself, despite the built-up area in many cases having now grown well beyond the boundaries that were abolished in 1974, and in a lot of cases there being a much larger administrative area of the same name which I would say is the official administrative definition of the place.

I would therefore like to change that guidance at "How to write about parishes" to say that unparished areas are not administrative divisions, do not have names, do not somehow retain the boundaries abolished in 1974 and should not be treated as analogous to parishes. In those handful of cases where the abolished urban district or borough does not have the same name as a settlement (such as Braintree and Bocking), any article of that name should be focussed on the historic district / borough and should not suggest that it somehow has an ongoing existence under that name.

3. Districts / settlements with the same name: There have been several cases recently where articles about settlements that have the same name as a district have been split into a "Borough / City of Anytown" article for the district and an "Anytown" article for the settlement. Examples of recent splits that I've spotted include Blackpool, Coventry, Luton, Middlesbrough, Peterborough, Slough, Worcester and York - there may be more. Some have since been re-merged back into one article, others remain separate. The policy at the moment is set out at WP:UKDISTRICTS, but I think aspects of that policy could do with a challenge and refresh.

Looking more holistically at the situation, throughout the world and throughout history administrative boundaries and urban areas have seldom, if ever, fully matched. Sometimes an urban area has grown beyond its administrative boundaries, in other cases a large hinterland, often including distinct urban areas, has been included in the administrative area for a variety of reasons. The distinction between urban and administrative areas is one that statisticians have long had to grapple with. For the purposes of an encyclopaedia though, it may be more helpful to say that both are equally valid ways of defining the place and explain the differences. Even where such definitions diverge wildly they can be accommodated in one article - we only have the one Beijing article despite the administrative area (larger than Yorkshire) being many times larger than the urban area and containing sizeable other towns.

However, our approach to English places has been to split articles as soon as there's any divergence between the urban area and the administrative area, with the debate often getting hung up on the extent to which the presence or otherwise of parishes in a district means that the district is distinct from the place, or whether the unparished area is the better definition of the place "proper". This has led to heavily overlapping articles - we have Slough for the built-up area, Borough of Slough for the administrative area and Slough Borough Council for the local authority.

I would like to see the default assumption at WP:UKDISTRICTS being that where a district and settlement share a name we should have the one article under that name ("Anytown") which discusses the settlement and district, and another about the local authority ("Anytown City Council"), but not have a separate article for "City of Anytown" that is just trying to talk about the geographic district without duplicating material on the place of the same name or its council. It would not be difficult to add a sentence or two to the settlement article to say "Anytown is a city and local government district in Anyshire", put separate built-up area and administrative area populations in the infobox, and somewhere in the article say "the city's administrative boundaries extend beyond the main built-up area, also including the parishes listed (and linked) below". I'd argue this would actually be more helpful to readers than the current situation of having to follow hatnotes and other links to try and understand the different definitions which attach to the same name and finding a lot of confusing overlap when you get there. Such an approach would also avoid the tortuous discussions we've been having about the language needed to describe the main settlement in a district which holds city status. This is also consistent with how the government describe places - unless they've explicitly said they're talking about urban areas, a reference to a place with the same name as a district means the whole district. Moreover, as we've seen with the significant changes between definitions of built-up areas defined for the 2011 census and the recently-released 2021 census, articles too wedded to the built-up area as their definition find themselves on shaky foundations.

In 16 cases (as far as I can tell) there's a parish with the same name as the district: Blaby, Chichester, Dover, Knowsley, Lewes, Lichfield, Maldon, Rochford, Sefton, Sevenoaks, Stroud, Tandridge, Tendring, Tewkesbury, Warwick, and Wokingham. In another three cases the namesake town is in a parish with a subtly different name to the district: Bolsover / Old Bolsover, Eastleigh / Eastleigh Town, and Stratford-on-Avon / Stratford-upon-Avon. In those cases we should continue to treat the parish as the main page for the settlement and keep the district page separate.

Thanks. Stortford (talk) 09:07, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

I can't find anything here to disagree with. Good work. Dave.Dunford (talk) 10:02, 9 September 2023 (UTC)
Quick scan through the points raised. Initial observations:
• Point 1 in complete agreement with — opening sentences should be concise and not delve into any former local govt. divisions etc.
• Point 2 inclined to agree, though would like to hear the reasoning from editors who think otherwise.
• Point 3 my initial thought is there isn't a one-size-fits-all — it depends on how much has been written and the degree of overlap. Interesting Beijing is an example used in support of the contention — it could just mean that information on Beijing's hinterland is underrepresented. Because government statisticians talk about an area to also mean a place doesn't necessarily mean we should follow. I'm not immediately seeing the logic of scrapping a local govt. district article because the district has got a similar name to the main settlement, especially where the district area includes many other distinct settlements. A case can be made for expanding the district articles rather than combining them in with the main settlement. Rupples (talk) 14:41, 9 September 2023 (UTC)
Thanks Rupples. Just for the avoidance of doubt, I'm not suggesting scrapping articles where the district name is merely similar. All those examples I give in the last paragraph are ones that need to be treated differently to the main proposal to merge, and for which we need to keep a separate district page and settlement page. It's in other cases where there's no parish of the same name as the district (like Blackpool, Middlesbrough, Preston, Slough, York etc.) that I'm suggesting merging would be clearer. Thanks Stortford (talk) 15:36, 9 September 2023 (UTC)
Broadly agree. The only difference I have is whether we should have "City of" articles: when the City/Borough area and urban area are the same or nearly so, it makes sense to have just one article. I don't agree though, when it is substantially larger and contains significant towns too. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 14:42, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

Thank you Stortford, you have crystallised what has been going through my mind for the last couple of months. Simplifying the lead opening sentence is a no brainer for me. I simply do not understand the fascination with unparished areas and civil parishes and feel most could be merged into appropriate articles. The simpler the better as far as I am concerned. Where the settlement and borough have the same name but are substantially different, for example the metropolitan boroughs, two articles might be better but should be judged individually. Esemgee (talk) 15:57, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

Thanks Esemgee and JMF - the difficulty comes in determining what we mean by "substantially" larger / different, and what reliable sources we're using for the definition of the place if not the district. The current policy at WP:UKDISTRICTS takes the view that we have separate pages for districts / settlements unless they're very similar, which sounds broadly similar to what you're both suggesting, but that policy has proved ineffective in stopping splits that I would have thought clearly fail it, like Blackpool. I have no idea what reliable definition of Blackpool those who opposed reuniting the settlement and borough pages think is now being used for the page about the settlement.
The key difference to my mind is between the built-up area and the administrative area, but the new 2021 census based built-up areas are significantly different to previous definitions. I cannot understand why the Office for National Statistics now think Bletchley is not part of the Milton Keynes built-up area, or why Huntington and Osbaldwick are excluded from the York built-up area - but it would be straying into original research to start trying to define our own versions of the main built-up area, which then feels a poor basis for the main article about the settlement.
We should certainly keep London Boroughs separate from any namesake settlements as they are a bit of a class of their own, and a similar case can be made for the metropolitan boroughs, although even there I'd not want to see a "City of Coventry" page about the borough and a "Coventry" page about the settlement, and indeed that was one of the cases which was split recently but the consensus was to put them back together again. Stortford (talk) 17:21, 9 September 2023 (UTC)
  • @Stortford:(edit conflict)
    1, I'd generally thought it was normal to mention what district and county a place is in even if it has the same name as a settlement of ceremonial county. Disclosure, last year I changed the guidance about Durham due to the fact we have separate articles namely County Durham and County Durham (district). With regard to mention the likes of "X is a village and former civil parish" or "X is a suburb of X and former civil parish" etc probably we need to consider if this is appropriate for category 1 parishes and larger category 1 parishes with other data etc I'd say for smaller places like Woolstone, Gloucestershire it may well be appropriate to mention it being a former parish. While parishes are subsidiary meanings of the settlements generally many of the sources discussing the place are referring to the entire parish, look at this source for example so mentioning it may be appropriate per WP:LEAD. While I know we don't normally mention towns etc being former districts I think that's because the structure of districts changes a lot and normally we have separate articles for districts while we almost never do for parishes.
    2, Yes I probably the one who as of recently has done this most but I was relying on what I was told on Commons that they were define under the Local Government Act 1972 and until a few years ago UKBMD defined individual unparished areas. I was the one that wrote Wikipedia:WikiProject UK geography/How to write about parishes but that was last year before these discussions (apart from 1) came up on Wikipedia. I agree we need to reword this guidance but I do think we need to keep both the fact that they should be covered in the settlement of the same name in general rather than having Bedworth (unparished area) etc even if we remove it from the lead as well as how we generally define them. I do agree with you that we do need to make clearer in the guidance about their lack of administrative functions and "official" definition etc. Yes I have agreed we generally don't need to mention unparished areas in the lead but I'd say for the handful of cases like Braintree and Bocking and South Turton where they are only the name of an unparished area then this should be mentioned in the lead. I don't really think we should strip the Braintree and Bocking article back to 1974 as the name is still namely there is a map in Panfield that shows the "Braintree and Bocking" unparished area so while I agree it may not have much official use today it does seem like stripping back to 1974 and removing the current information would be a step back.
    3, I think generally we should have separate articles for most districts with the same name unlike parishes. While I agree in some parts of the world such places are combined in many parts of the world districts are split for example in Austria see Braunau am Inn/Braunau am Inn District and Worcester, Massachusetts/Worcester County, Massachusetts in the US (counties are probably largely equivalent to districts here) unless like San Francisco where consolidated. Also consider the likes of Horsens/Horsens Municipality in Denmark (where a municipality is probably the equivelant of a district not parish) AFAIK are always split at last on Da Wikipedia. I think England should be one of the countries that does generally split 3rd order divisions from their settlements, see Wikipedia:Separate articles for administrative divisions to settlements which I wrote a few years ago. I don't think we should encourage articles on district councils rather than districts, it would encourage editors to link/refer to settlements as being in the council its self such as saying "Eccleshall is a town and civil parish in Stafford Borough Council, in the county of Staffordshire, England" instead of saying something like Eccleshall is a town and civil parish in the Stafford district, in the county of Staffordshire, England". It will mean information about local government will be in the council article yet the district its self will be covered in the settlement. This would create more problems as people would debate about if Borough of Stafford should go to Stafford or Stafford Borough Council and encourage piped links for the council linking the district name this would go against WP:UKNOWGOV 11 and WP:UKOLDGOV 8. In contrast if the council redirects to the district any links for the council will work and it will be clearer the council should be discussed in the settlement not district. Crouch, Swale (talk) 20:41, 9 September 2023 (UTC)
@Crouch, Swale:: #1, yes, but in the body, not in the lead. #2, unparished areas are defined only by what they are not, rather than what they are. They aren't "a thing" and we should not pretend otherwise. #3 IMO, it is only (but absolutely) worthwhile to do that when the district [loose sense] concerned contains independent settlements (cf City of Lancaster, City of Carlisle, and more). --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 21:15, 9 September 2023 (UTC)
If it helps, ignoring the London Boroughs and (for the moment) the metropolitan boroughs, and also excluding those I've already mentioned where there's a parish of the same / similar name so shouldn't be merged either, that leaves 45 districts which share their name with a settlement and have separate articles for each. In approximate order of my personal view of the priority for merging (with the divisions being necessarily subjective):
Tier 1 (those I think shouldn't be split even under current policy): Blackpool, Ipswich, Middlesbrough, Slough
Tier 2 (others that arguably also shouldn't be split even under current policy and where the articles were only split off in the last year or so): Peterborough, Warrington, York
Tier 3 (where other settlements are generally villages or immediately adjoin the main urban area and the rest of the district is rural): Bedford, Boston, Brentwood, Bromsgrove, Burnley, Chesterfield, Darlington, Dartford, Fareham, Great Yarmouth, Hartlepool, Havant, Preston, Rugby, Stockton-on-Tees
Tier 4 (where the district contains other freestanding urban areas that are generally described as towns): Ashford, Basildon, Braintree, Canterbury, Chelmsford, Chorley, Colchester, Guildford, Horsham, Lancaster, Maidstone, Mansfield, Milton Keynes, Newcastle-under-Lyme, St Albans, Stafford, Swindon, Tunbridge Wells, Winchester
Tier 5 (those named after a settlement that is in no way the main "place" in the district and so should not be merged): Broxbourne, Gedling, Halton
Tier 6 (the namesake settlement isn't even in the district and so should not be merged): Broxtowe
With appropriate wording, all the tier 1, 2, 3 and 4 district pages could be merged with their namesake settlement page. The other point to bear in mind is that in the majority of cases the article about the district ends up being mostly focussed on the council - for example, I would say that save for a sentence or two, most of the Borough of Chesterfield article is actually about the council. That being the case, I would say having a page called "Chesterfield" to talk about the settlement and borough and a page called "Chesterfield Borough Council" to take the rest of the material currently at Borough of Chesterfield is actually the more intuitive way of presenting this information. Stortford (talk) 19:57, 9 September 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for the above — sets out the scope of the issue and helps evaluation. Rupples (talk) 20:22, 9 September 2023 (UTC)
Much food for thought that at first reading seems comprehensive and very reasonable, thanks Esemgee (talk) 20:49, 9 September 2023 (UTC)
To show how a combined settlement / district page could work for even one of the places that includes a wider hinterland and separate towns, I've mocked up a user page with annotations for Colchester at User:Stortford/Colchester
The focus of the article remains the main built-up area, but there's a clearer acknowledgement that the administrative area is larger and contains other places and it's more transparent as to the difference between the built-up area and the district, both of which are formally just called Colchester. People looking for detail on any of those places in the outlying parts of the district will probably be looking for a specific named village or town anyway rather than going via Colchester, but even so I think this covers as much detail about the geographic area as the current City of Colchester page does. I'd then move the current City of Colchester page to Colchester City Council - I'd argue that someone stumbling across the current page called City of Colchester wouldn't intuitively know from that title that it's about a local government district rather than the city itself. Most of the material there is actually about Colchester City Council, which feels a more user-friendly name.
As to Crouch, Swale's concern about people saying things "Wivenhoe is a town in Colchester City Council" I agree that wording is wrong, but also easily fixed. People can choose how they want to phrase it - "Wivenhoe is a town in Colchester" / "Wivenhoe is a town in the Colchester district" / "Wivenhoe is a town within the boundaries of the city of Colchester" or whatever - or not say it at all - I see the lead on Wivenhoe at the moment makes no mention of the fact it's part of the Colchester district. Thanks. Stortford (talk) 11:37, 10 September 2023 (UTC)
I fully support User:Stortford's very thoughtful and clearly worded proposals. We really must keep the "average reader" in our minds when we write any content for any article on a settlement or administrative area - this is especially true of the lead section. The first sentence should be short and should address the "What?" and "Where?" in the broadest possible terms. Descending into the rabbit hole of former civil parishes and non-existent unparished areas is not appropriate. Best wishes, Mertbiol (talk) 12:16, 10 September 2023 (UTC)
I'm afraid I can see major edit wars breaking out were we to accept that idea. No doubt others will have similar examples, but anyone who expects Morecambe is a town in Lancaster to be accepted has another think coming, even though it is only across the river. Even less so, Olney is a town in Milton Keynes – no it isn't, it is six miles of farmland from the urban edge. Most of User:Stortford's proposal is excellent but this one won't fly. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 13:45, 10 September 2023 (UTC)
Can't it just be a town in Lancashire, and a town in Buckinghamshire? Does the first sentence reaaaaaaaally need "and civil parish in the unitary authority area of the City of Milton Keynes". When someone asks "where is Olney?" "what is Olney"? and so on I can't imagine they care about the type of authority, the fact they're only in the "area" of the authority (which just raises questions of what the difference is between being "in" and being under control of, like it's some kind of enclave) and already have to go to another article to find out just what the mysterious "City of Milton Keynes authority area" is to understand what it's on about. Koncorde (talk) 21:09, 11 September 2023 (UTC)
I would oppose a Colchester merge proposal. Listing all the parishes in the Colchester article spoils that article and as a reader I wouldn't expect to see this or a description of the geographic area beyond the settlement. There is sufficient rural area and parishes outside of the main settlement's built-up area to justify a separate article and that is, I believe, the main criterion. I recently opposed a merge in the Preston discussion on similar grounds. Both City of Coventry and Borough of Luton were rightly merged back, in line with existing guidance. Therefore, for now, I oppose the change in the default wording for Stortford's initial proposal no. 3, but support proposals 1 & 2. Rupples (talk) 15:42, 10 September 2023 (UTC)
Indeed I struggle to see a problem if the articles are not forks. AFAICS, for example, Milton Keynes, City of Milton Keynes and Milton Keynes City Council each has a well-defined and distinct role. OTH, City of York could do with a cleanup but York and City of York Council are fine. City of Carlisle combines the physical and political geographies: Carlisle City Council redirects to the political section. I can see merit in that model, but it is essential that these multi-settlement articles retain a distinct identity and content. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk)
I'd probably say Milton Keynes City Council could be merged with City of Milton Keynes but City of York Council is a bit different as that has had more than one council namely the 1893-1996 district's council (which was a municipal borough until 1888 and a county borough until 1974 and a non-metropolitan district until being completely abolished in 1996) but in most other cases the council is best covered in the district. However merging unitary councils, London borough councils and metropolitan borough councils en mass was rejected last year so I'm not going to push for that but I'd certainly consider that. Crouch, Swale (talk) 19:09, 10 September 2023 (UTC)
@Stortford City of Leeds/Leeds doesn't seem to be in your list, but is a case like Lancaster where there are other settlements (eg Otley) which are within the City but not the city.
I would not agree that tier 4 districts in your list should be merged with their namesake settlements. I live in City of Lancaster, but do not live in Lancaster, Lancashire. They are very different entities. City of Lancaster could merge with Lancaster City Council, as the district has no unifying characteristics except those imposed by local government.
I agree that neither "former civil parish" nor "unparished area" is useful in the lead sentence: they are telling us what the settlement is not. Later in the lead it might be appropriate to include mention of former civil parish status, as in "X was formerly a civil parish but in nnnn it was combined with Y and Z to form the parish of ABC", but this is not something for the top of the article. PamD 19:17, 10 September 2023 (UTC)
Echo this. There are an awful lot of articles that go to great length explaining what the article isn't about, and I suspect it's in order to fend off some imaginary vexatious editor. Koncorde (talk) 21:09, 11 September 2023 (UTC)
  • Stortford I'm afraid I've got to oppose the suggested change to Colchester etc. Which article will people end up linking to in other articles? Where will City of Colchester redirects to? These are the kinds of problems you're going to get. People will want to describe Wivenhoe as being in Colchester City Council. You will for example get things like people linking or saying Border Rural District was replaced by Carlisle City Council etc which as you have agreed is wrong. The district article can easily accommodate the council article even if most content is for the council but the reverse isn't true and the scope would be unclear. We should generally at least have a district article if the district is clearly larger than the settlement meaning none of the settlement may be considered to spill into other districts and the district has recent boundaries or parishes though I think we should split some that don't meet both of these requirements. In terms of future splits/merged I definitely think we should split Redditch but Newcastle upon Tyne and Gosport are more borderline. We could merge Blackpool and possibly Slough but I think having separate articles seems fine. Generally with the likes of Colchester we should focus the article on the settlement but also include (not normally in the lead) a small amount about the unparished area. While I can understand the confusion and problems the current setup may have I think Crouch, Swale (talk) 19:09, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

Stortford I agree 100% with the first two proposals and could live with the third if that list of parishes or other towns/villages were in the Council article. I think the council article is a better fit for the wider district although it should be mentioned in the settlement article. I think what happens now between borough/council articles is that material is added randomly especially to the lead. Actually it happens in lots of articles hence the proliferation of civil parishes etc. Esemgee (talk) 21:23, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

  • Thanks all for the feedback - I was anticipating the district / settlement merge would be the most controversial. I thought it was nevertheless worth suggesting and having the discussion, particularly in light of the difficulties we've been having both with how to describe settlements within a wider district that holds city status, and with the new 2021 census built-up area definitions potentially significantly changing the statistical basis for articles that are about a built-up area.
    I'm quite happy to go with the consensus and withdraw that suggestion, with a few observations:
    • For districts / built-up area names which share names I think population figures would benefit from clearer explanation - on the Blackpool page I have no idea whether the population figure given is the urban area / district or something else. It would be lot clearer if in such cases we clearly labelled the figure - something like "149,070 (Built-up area, 2021)" (with a source referenced afterwards, obviously).
    • Those who opposed merging Blackpool / Borough of Blackpool (kept separate as no consensus) and Middlesbrough / Borough of Middlesbrough (closed as keep) did not provide an alternative definition for what they think the "town" is that can be clearly compared to the borough to allow objective comparison of how different the two definitions are, which doesn't feel particularly robust.
    • The articles about districts are frequently poor and could do with some attention - whilst I understand the consensus desire to keep the district pages apart on principle in most cases, do have a look at the quality of the district pages which result. Most end up being primarily about the council (which I agree is important) but with very little about the wider geographic district. (City of Milton Keynes being an honourable exception.)
    • I have compared the populations of the new 2021 census built-up areas with districts that share names. Where we currently have a single article, all but one (Woking) have a built-up area population that is at least 85% of the district population. Conversely, there are seven cases that are still split with ratios higher than 85%: Darlington (86%), Peterborough (88%), Hartlepool (95%), Middlesbrough (103% - i.e. built up area larger than district), Slough (105%), Blackpool (106%) and Ipswich (109%).
    As a more modest alternative proposal, can I therefore suggest that the policy at WP:UKDISTRICTS is amended to the effect that the following criteria are changed:
    1 - change "little or no rural hinterland" to "any rural hinterland is sparsely populated"
    2 - change "other distinct settlements" to "other built-up areas with a population greater than 5,000" (to match the new ONS definition of small built-up areas, which are all mapped here)
    3 - after "roughly the same" add "usually over 85%"
    4 - delete this criterion about boundaries pre-dating the 1974 reforms - yes, the reforms that year were significant, but plenty of places have grown lots since then and the key comparison to make is between the current built-up area and district.
    5 - delete the criterion about civil parishes - it's now much easier to create parishes in suburban areas. Whereas the parishes immediately after the 1974 reforms were all either former rural parishes or successor parishes and therefore (generally) reasonable proxies for separate communities, that relationship has gradually broken down since as some former rural parishes have been developed and absorbed into neighbouring urban areas, and elsewhere new suburban parishes have been created.
    6 - add a new criterion about any definition of the "town" being used for the settlement article other that the built-up area or administrative boundary needing to be reliably sourced.
    If those tweaks to that policy are acceptable, I'd then look to propose mergers for the Ipswich, Blackpool, Slough, Middlesbrough, Peterborough, Hartlepool and Darlington articles, but keep the status quo for everywhere else.
    I think my original suggestions 1 and 2 regarding updating the policy on lead sentences and unparished areas were more broadly supported, so I'll put together some wording to that effect (taking account of others' comments) at WP:UKCITIES and Wikipedia:WikiProject UK geography/How to write about parishes shortly. Thanks. Stortford (talk) 21:43, 10 September 2023 (UTC)
    I've looked at the work put in by @Crouch, Swale at User:Crouch,_Swale/District_split and the split/merge 'ticks/crosses'. Although not official, if that interpretation had been used as a guide then Blackpool, Slough and Middlesborough would not be split. I've examined these three and agree merge is appropriate. The Ipswich article is about the historical County Borough, and I don't see a confusing overlap with the main article, so that could be retained. Peterborough and Darlington come in under your proposed criteria and looking at those, I'd prefer to see local consensus obtained — but not ruling out a merge. In summary, I think the existing criteria are OK and work, if interpreted the right way. Unfortunately, this hasn't happened in some cases leading to unnecessary article splits. I also have reservations about the use of 85% and 5,000 population in the proposals. I wouldn't advise having such parameters/cut offs — you get the 84% separate article/86% merge and 5,100 split/4,900 merge. Sorry, but don't see these as helpful. Off-wiki for a few days so won't be commenting further, if this discussion closes quickly. Rupples (talk) 07:57, 11 September 2023 (UTC)
    Thanks - fair point on the risk of including numbers - perhaps leave criteria 2 and 3 as they are then. The point about Ipswich is that Borough of Ipswich redirects to County Borough of Ipswich, which is mostly about the pre-1974 authority, but also mentions the modern authority. Lots of places within Ipswich have been linked to Borough of Ipswich and so end up via the redirect at the article mostly about the long-defunct county borough. I think Borough of Ipswich should redirect instead to Ipswich, leaving the County Borough of Ipswich article to be purely about history. Merging Blackpool, Middlesbrough and Slough have all been debated recently; inconclusively in two cases and I'm not convinced the decision to keep Middlesbrough split was particularly soundly-made, and so I'm hoping that a clearer steer from the policy might help us reach consensus in those cases.
    As to Peterborough, Darlington and Hartlepool, again I'd be looking for a consensus to merge on each. Darlington and Hartlepool are both unusual in that despite being unitary authorities there isn't a separate Darlington Borough Council page or a Hartlepool Borough Council page - if we were to merge the settlement and borough pages such a council page should be created, but that would be an improvement in my view. Peterborough managed fine with just the one article until July 2022 when it was split, and I don't think there's much in the City of Peterborough article that isn't already adequately covered at either Peterborough City Council or Peterborough. The splitting of Peterborough was reverted a couple of times (not by me) and the subsequent discussion focussed on the fact that Peterborough does have a rural area (agreed), with little thought for the extent to which the City of Peterborough article actually adds value to the encyclopaedia overall rather than being a fork / mirror, given the coverage at Peterborough and Peterborough City Council. Thanks Stortford (talk) 12:52, 11 September 2023 (UTC)
    @Stortford: Yes indeed the district merges will likely be controversial as they have been for years. My (slight) preference would be to have a separate article for every district but that's probably not going to happen and users have good reasons not to do that.
    Yes population figures should clearly state what it is for (if it isn't for a settlement) see User:Crouch, Swale/Populations. Generally in terms of settlements with districts/parishes with the same name etc I'd say the priority in terms of what is mentioned would be (1) BUASD, (2) BUA, (3) parish/unparished area, (4) district and (5) ward. If like Blofield Heath only settlement population is present then I have used "it", if settlement and administrative unit population exists like Fulford, Staffordshire the what the figure is for both is specified. If you look at Woolstone, Gloucestershire it says "In 1931 the parish had a population of 85" and in this case both the data (1931) and what it is for (parish) is important here as we need to be clear that it is 1931 and not the most recent census as well as that its for the parish not settlement. In terms of article structure I'd probably only mention the BUASD (or BUA if no BUASD exists) and possibly the parish or district population in the lead, see Wakefield and Dudley for example. However as the settlement article would be a broad-concept article I'd mention the other figures further down in the article.
    For Blackpool the BUA can be used as the town, for Middlesbrough the (now BUA) and unparished area can be used for the "town" but yes we need to be careful about not over emphasizing on the definition of unparished areas.
    Agree some articles do have overlap problems with the council articles but this problem also affects districts that the name is only used as a district, see the Cheshire East article which includes lots of information about the council, Cheshire East Council so this problem isn't inherently linked to "settlement" districts. My suggestion would just be to merge most of the remaining unitary/metropolitan/London borough councils where a separate article exists on the district with leaving some like Leeds City Council where there may be enough content. However many editors think that the top local authorities should have separate articles.
    Woking was merged last year having existed since 2007, see Talk:Woking#Merger discussion and Talk:Woking/Archive 1#Borough v. town possibly we could split Woking again if the definition has changed.
    I'll have a look at Wikipedia:WikiProject UK geography/How to write about parishes, indeed removing the point about unparished areas being inherently notable seems like a good idea, please take a look and revert if needed, thanks.
    In terms of changed to criteria:
    2 and 3, I don't think we should require at least 5,000 in terms of other places in the district if a place is a town or village and is clearly district even if small then I think we should keep separate. I'd note that Wolverhampton is 234,015 (BUA) and 263,727 (district) which is much less than Hartlepool even though Hartlepool contains places that are unquestionably separate while it may be more difficult to assess this in terms of Wolverhampton even though Bilston has 34,639. Peterborough, Hartlepool and Darlington all have places that are unquestionably separate so I'd say these should definitely be kept separate. I understand that in the case of Peterborough the BUA also covers Old Fletton and much of the parished area as well as for some reason places west of the A1 but it otherwise seems like this is district. I would agree that this may well be useful in districts that are part of larger urban areas like Fareham v Gosport for example Gosport BUA is 70,131 while the district is 81,952 while Fareham BUA is 42,640 but district is 114,513. I'd argue that Hartlepool has a far stronger claim to stay separate even though it doesn't contain any other BUAs as the other settlements there are clearly distinct than say Bilston even though it has 34,639. So I'd support this addition but only for the more urban districts and not for those with unquestionably separate places.
    4 and 5, the changes in 1974 are often useful when also taking into account today as pre 1974 districts normally reflected "natural" boundaries for places unlike many of the post 1974 ones. So as long as we look what sources define today this criteria still seems useful. Similarly while some parishes have been established in urban areas or were rural ones but are now part of the BUA the vast majority of the time districts with parishes are normally far more distinct from the settlement than those without parishes, I think the words "few" can take care of those that are either post 1974 in unparished areas and those that have become part of the settlement.
    In terms of 6 I'd consider asking if the settlement would be regarded by most people (no just reliable sources) to clearly be smaller than the district. Consider Manchester for example where although the BUA is smaller than the district the term "Manchester" is often used for the whole of the (before the recent changes in BUA definitions) Greater Manchester BUA, consider Newcastle upon Tyne for Tyneside and Birmingham for West Midlands. I added "District is not clearly larger than settlement" criteria to my tables a few years ago. What I am saying is the although Manchester (and before the changes to BUAs) Birmingham and Newcastle upon Tyne BUASDs covered smaller areas than the districts but due to the names being used for larger areas in common usage it may be best not to split these. I think if we have strict criteria defining how we define towns then its more likely we will split the likes of Manchester etc which you are probably not advocating. Would you agree with these points? Crouch, Swale (talk) 17:50, 11 September 2023 (UTC)
    I agree the numeric criteria for 2 and 3 were a step too far. The 1974 boundaries - I disagree that they remain valid as "natural" boundaries today. The boundaries that existed immediately prior to those reforms only reflect the position at the last time the boundaries had been reviewed. For some fast-growing places the reviews weren't keeping up, which was a part of the impetus for the reforms. Whereas previously you had to abolish a rural parish council if you were absorbing the area into an urban district / borough, the larger post-1974 districts allow those parish councils to continue to exist even after their areas have been substantially developed and absorbed into the urban area of the neighbouring town. It is these dynamic places which have grown most which give us the biggest debates here. Yes, the pre-1974 boundaries still work pretty well for many places that haven't changed much in a long time, which probably is the majority of the country by land area. However, I see that as co-incidence rather than an endorsement that the pre-1974 boundaries should continue to be seen as natural boundaries for places that had already grown beyond their boundaries before 1974 or have done so since.
    For 6, no I certainly wouldn't want to see separate Manchester / City of Manchester articles, and I have great difficulty with adopting a "most people" test - give 100 people a map and ask them to draw where they think the natural boundaries are and you'd get at least 110 different answers. For more rural areas, I know plenty of people who live in isolated farms / hamlets who still consider themselves part of the wider community, particularly at parish level - their definition of that place would be very different from an urban outsider's looking in who might assume the urban area is more important and so draw the boundary tightly around the main village in the parish. This is partly what I was trying to get at with arguing in favour of more merges. Place names frequently have multiple meanings / definitions, and in separating out different definitions into different articles we lose some of that holistic overview of what all the different definitions might be. Stortford (talk) 06:18, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
    @Stortford: I think you're suggestions for 2 and 3 are a good idea for many districts like Wolverhampton and Woking etc that are BUASDs in larger BUAs where the boundaries of the BUASDs may be considered more arbitrary so splitting even if the BUASD is more than a bit smaller than district and I could even see a logic in being stricter than the 5,000 and 85% rule. I just don't think this is a good idea for the likes of Hartlepool and Darlington which contain unquestionably distinct settlements unlike Wolverhampton and Woking. From what I can see the pre 1974 and parishes criteria works for the vast majority of cases. Exceptions to the 1974 ones could be Fareham, Havant (different name), Gosport, Redditch and Basildon (minor boundary changes) of which most appear to have clearly distinct settlements. Exceptions to the pre 1974 boundary changes that don't appear to have district settlements and also have some parishes are Cheltenham, Coventry, Birmingham, Manchester and Worcester. Gloucester and Oxford later had boundary changes but I've considered longstanding as the orders didn't abolish the districts and form new ones. Otherwise from what I can tell both criteria work well. Do you have any other examples of which these criteria don't work?
    I agree this suggestion is subjective/arbitrary but its intended to allow us to keep the likes of Manchester merged even when most of the criteria for merging aren't satisfied. Probably this shouldn't be on the guidance as too subjective but can stay on my tables. I'd say keeping the definitions in 1 article is a good idea for parishes (and unparished areas) but not districts as as I have mentioned its normal for 3rd but not 4th order administrative units to be split. Goosnargh works well which as you can see much of the newer village is outside the parish and the parish also covers a large area as well as other settlements but we describe the differences in 1 article. Or see Stanhope, County Durham and Rothwell, West Yorkshire for 2 extreme examples of a parish/unparished area covering a far larger area than the settlement of the same name. Crouch, Swale (talk) 20:23, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

We could describe a place as the settlement (not other entities that share the name, eg district/parish) and gives its geographical location - a general description of where it is in Englamd/Scotland/Wales (no county, no local govt area). Eg, Dover is a coastal town in the far south east of England.'The other detail can be described in the body. This would remove all the reasons for the countless edit wars and clumsy descriptions as noted above. I cannot see any reason for objecting to this idea. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 22:51, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

I wouldn't fancy policing that. You'll have locals from all sorts of places reinserting county names etc. Rcsprinter123 (say) 23:33, 10 September 2023 (UTC)
My hunch is that wouldn't happen. The reason it happens now is people take exception to what they see as the 'wrong' word. Remove the words and you've removed the chance of them being 'wrong'. There would be very few disagreements about the geographical based location of a place. These current edit wars nearly always happen in the lead or infobox where there simply isn't room to explain matters in any detail, and everyone accepts that the topic isn't simple. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 06:51, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

Arbitrarily inserted section break for editor convenience

There are a few important things that we need to consider: Firstly, we're in a situation where the de jure (administrative) boundaries of many settlements don't make sense to the average person, and for good reason, because obviously Stocksbridge doesn't look like that it should be part of a city, but it technically is part of the City of Sheffield. So we need to strike a balance between acknowledging the fact that local govt is an important factor to talk about (and IMO Sheffield can influence Stocksbridge, and MK can influence Olney via Sheffield and Milton Keynes city councils respectively), whilst also acknowledging the obvious geography (e.g. both Stocksbridge and Olney are around 8 miles (13 km) from Sheffield and MK city centres in distinctly rural locations). Secondly, there are instances of the original area of settlements, as well as their respective BUAs and LAs, containing towns and villages. For example, with Milton Keynes, there are pre-existing towns within its 1967 designated area (e.g. Bletchley), its contiguous built-up area (e.g. Newport Pagnell) and its LA boundary (e.g. Olney), so a district containing somewhat distinct towns isn't enough to qualify it for a split from the settlement article. In this case, linking to Stortford's proposals, I would be happy to state that both Bletchley and NP are in Milton Keynes, while with Olney we could continue to state that it is in the unitary authority area of the City of Milton Keynes. Same applies to places like Morley, which politically and geographically most certainly belongs to Leeds IMO, and not "a separate town in the metropolitan borough..." as the article currently implies. Anonymous MK2006 (talk) 18:40, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

Would anyone object to saying , something like, 'Stocksbridge is a small settlement just to the west of the Sheffield metropolis in the north of England'. No mention of administration at all - that will come in the body below. A reader doesn't really care who is runs the local council, it tells him nothing. But being to the west of Sheffield does tell him something. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 20:16, 11 September 2023 (UTC)
I don't personally like the use of "settlement" as it's oddly unspecific, but the use of "Stocksbridge is a town west of Sheffield" is sufficient. The need to over-specify town, civil parish, unparished and so on is unnecessary and can be dealt with in a subsequent paragraph, or under Governance or similar. But, for example, the "Civil Parish" is mentioned 5 times in the article, 4 of those are in the lead, 1 is in the infobox, and there is a passing reference to a parish church in the "early history". If it isn't significant enough to warrant ANY mention in the main article you have to question why it is so laboured over elsewhere. This, per some of my prior comments on earlier discussions, also applies to the need to refer to various types of Districts, Boroughs and so on to an off-putting level - often at a higher degree of detail than is contained in the article. Koncorde (talk) 20:57, 11 September 2023 (UTC)
I think the status of town and civil parish is necessary and appropriate and we need to specify its in the Sheffield district rather than only mentioning only that its west of Sheffield. Th term "civil parish" only appears 3 times in text (the other 2 are from the infobox and category). The 1st mention as explained is needed, the 3rd mention is needed as its specifying the population figure is for the parish not town but the 2nd mention may be a little bit confusing but seems fine. We probably don't need to mention the region, ward or constituency just the status a a town and civil parish, its district, county and country. With regard to the point about "civil parish" not being mentioned further down that's probably because information about governance hasn't been added yet even though it could be added. Crouch, Swale (talk) 21:25, 11 September 2023 (UTC)
I think civil parish is worth a mention, as in "X is a village and civil parish in Yshire", because a civil parish is a real thing and often is not identical with the village but includes other villages, hamlets, or tracts of open land. So if the article is about that "X", it needs to cover both entities, ie describe (perhaps in a "parish" section), the boundaries of that parish and list the other settlements within it, as well as describing the village of X. PamD 22:06, 11 September 2023 (UTC)
But for the vilage of Y in parish X, we probably don't need to put that in the lead sentence: "Y is a village in Zshire, England, n miles west of ATown on the River Avon. It is in the civil parish of X and in Ddd district." But that would be a massive change from current practice and I could foresee vociferous resistance! PamD 22:12, 11 September 2023 (UTC)
In reply to both Pam and Crouch (EDIT CONFLICT, Pam just added a comment somewhat covering what I am about to say); I'm not saying we don't have those things. I am saying we don't need them in a prolonged compound sentence. I.e. is there any harm in saying:
"Stocksbridge is a town west of Sheffield in South Yorkshire with a population of 9869. The town is in the Civil Parish of the same name which forms part of the City of Sheffield. The parish has a population of 13,455 and includes the villages of Deepcar, Bolsterstone, and Ewden. The town is located in the steep-sided valley of the Little Don River, below the Underbank Reservoir, to the east of the Peak District in what is historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire."
Do we need to press every meaning and definition into one sentence? Koncorde (talk) 22:33, 11 September 2023 (UTC)
I was thinking more radically. There is no mention of a county or any local govt area in the lead. The point is what the average person wants to know about a place. I'd never heard of Stocksbridge until today, but I now know it's a smallish town just west of the urban sprawl of Sheffield (I know where Sheffield is but for those who don't know anything about the UK, 'north of England' could also be added. That is all I care about. If I want to know more, such as parish, comes under Sheffield city for local admin etc then that is in the body below. In reality, what is so important about the local parish or local govt that warrants their inclusion in the prime position of the lead? Roger 8 Roger (talk) 22:54, 11 September 2023 (UTC)
I don't disagree Roger. If they are so important that nobody has bothered to write a Governance or Administration section in the article (and many others) - what is really significant about it? If we have more detail in the lead than in the body our priorities seem very messed up. That isn't necessarily a challenge to write wordy descriptions of Gov / Admin, but more a reflection that we need to focus on making easily understood articles that proportionately reflect the significance to the general public and rather than focus on definitions of tiers of government (see several discussions above) to the detriment of legibility. Koncorde (talk) 23:21, 11 September 2023 (UTC)
In my proposals I was trying to avoid the overly formulaic "X is a village in the parish / unparished area of Y in the Y district of the non-metropolitan county of Z in the ceremonial county of Z". However, removing the administrative information completely from the lead pushes the pendulum too far the other way. We can't know what every reader is looking for, but I think that at a glance check of where a place is in terms of who runs it most certainly is something that a sizeable chunk of the readership would expect to see pretty early on. Plus you'd get endless edit wars as to which well-known town/city a place is described as being near if that were to become the main description in the lead - is Tring measured from Hemel Hempstead, Milton Keynes, Hertford, Aylesbury or London? Stortford (talk) 05:30, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
None of these things are mutually exclusive though - and again, the "administrative information" is fine - but it needs to be what is proportional to the topic, and frankly that is not anything close to our current process or tendencies. The lead should, per WP:LEAD, "cultivate interest in reading on". When we forcibly embed multiple elements in one sentence I don't think it is cultivating much.
As for relational geography and so on - I have no issue omitting that also from the first sentence, (and honestly worrying about what might be edit warred over seems to be at least some part of the reason why we have become so proscriptive in what is and isn't included and the format and terminology used). It was included in my example only because I was trying to include all the current information in the lead in an actual structured that stayed relevant. It is just as easy to have;
"Stocksbridge is a town in South Yorkshire with a population of 9869. The town is in the Civil Parish of the same name which forms part of the City of Sheffield. The parish has a population of 13,455 and includes the villages of Deepcar, Bolsterstone, and Ewden. The town is located to the west of Sheffield in the steep-sided valley of the Little Don River, below the Underbank Reservoir, to the east of the Peak District in what is historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire."
But at the bare minimum we should just as much be looking at what is actually important to conveying the topic because right now far too many article have lede that are just summaries of administrative things which are then neglected from the actual article body and vice versa important current or historical information is neglected from the lede. Koncorde (talk) 10:33, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

I think there is often too much in the first sentence, but I quite like it if it says "is a village and civil parish" even if the parish is not mentioned in the rest of the article. Two reasons:

  • Having a parish is a good indication of the significance of the village.
  • Defining the article as being about both the village and parish can be generally helpful. If there is a place or event that is outside the village but within the parish (for example a plane crash during World War II), and an editor wants to mention it in Wikipedia, but it is not notable enough for its own article, then a village/parish article provides a suitable home. Parish boundaries are a traditional way to divide up rural areas. JonH (talk) 10:56, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
Even if the article was about the Town you could still mention a plane crash happening in its vicinity - not that I disagree with general idea, but just that to include the parish doesn't necessitate its priority or preclude the mention of other things that probably should be mentioned in the lede (like a plane crash) because it happened just outside some border or other. Koncorde (talk) 11:25, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
Not just rural areas have CPs. I don't know how widespread this is, but the urban area of City of Milton Keynes is fully parished (as is its rural area). See List of civil parishes in Buckinghamshire#Milton Keynes. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 16:55, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
Swindon is another, apart from the fact that "Milton Keynes" parish covers the area around Milton Keynes Village there is otherwise no parish with the same name as the town covering the central part of the town and instead they have been subdivided into several parishes. Otherwise all other districts with the same name as settlements have either a parish of the same name even if there are several in the urban area or are unparished areas. Luckily this doesn't matter in either case as both have large areas outside the settlements that are in the districts. Crouch, Swale (talk) 20:35, 13 September 2023 (UTC)
"X is a village and civil parish" seems the most appropriate wording as it makes it clearer that the article is about both as many rural parishes cover large areas of rural and and other settlements but the only statistics like population etc are for the parish not settlement. Look at Polstead and Morland, Cumbria for example that use parish population data. With urban parishes this may be less important as there tends to be more statistics for the settlement its self but the parish is surely still important and it also goes along with the fact that unlike districts we tend to keep settlement and parish with the same name in 1 article. I think we have consensus that we don't need to have "X is a town and unparished area" in the lead and until I started using this it was only rarely used and its possible at the time I started none used it. I think we have a clear consensus against that but "X is a village and civil parish" has been standard for as long as I know. Crouch, Swale (talk) 19:45, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
I support merging the articles on the districts for Blackpool, Middlesbrough and Slough back into their town article. There was never any sensible reason for splitting them. I attempted to merge Middlesbrough back but the discussions went nowhere. Eopsid (talk) 20:19, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

Greater London move request

Latest comment: 1 year ago1 comment1 person in discussion

There's a move request for Greater London at Talk:Greater_London#Requested_move_13_September_2023. G-13114 (talk) 21:16, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

2011BUASD becomes 2021BUA and 2011BUA hasn’t carried over.

Latest comment: 1 year ago9 comments3 people in discussion

The new BUA information was released on the 3rd of August 2023. I’ve started going round updating some towns and cities, such as Middlesbrough.

They is no equivalent to 2011BUAs for 2021 so we’re going to have to make a plan. Keep them, keep some or lose them. At the moment some of the built-up area articles are in a bit of a mess; for example some retaining 2001 urban area in there name, some updated and West Midlands comes under the international conurbation. They was the planned conglomeration term for 2021, which was scrapped, at-least we don’t have to deal with that.

If we are to keep some BUAs, how do we get good referenced demographics. It will have to be an article by article basis as to what to do with each. To start:

  • West Midlands (Coventry excluded), Greater Manchester (Wigan excluded) and Tyneside (Wearside excluded to make Tyne and Wear) have one administrative town/city which they miss out to the county. GM and WM could merge really while Tyneside and Wearside could be kept separate or the areas and merge them.
  • Teesside and Liverpool BUA could go with Tees Valley and Liverpool CR, I suggest Tees Valley fold into Teesside (even going as far as disambiguating Tees Valley because they is Teesdale and Teesside which could then claim Tees Valley) and Liverpool CR rename to Liverpool (region) with Liverpool BUA merged in.
  • South Hampshire BUA does help Hampshire focus on North Hampshire, Nottingham UA has a decent number of places around Nottingham which Nottingham can’t really focus on.

Chocolateediter (talk) 20:56, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

  • "Figure 1: Explore population characteristics of individual BUAs". Retrieved 7 August 2021.
  • "Towns and cities, characteristics of built-up areas, England and Wales: Census 2021". Retrieved 7 August 2021.Chocolateediter (talk) 21:13, 7 August 2023 (UTC)
IMO, we really need to see what they actually do first. I think that this
BUAs are derived from a process that uses satellite imagery to recognise the boundaries of built-up area development and identify individual built-up area settlements (equating to cities, towns, and villages). The only exception is Greater London, where different settlements are not able to be separately identified and where the geography instead follows administrative borough boundaries. This means that London is not included in most of the analysis in this article, which instead focuses on the remainder of England and Wales where the geography is applied in a consistent manner.

The new edition of the geography, produced by Ordnance Survey, includes several changes to previous versions. The main change is that the geography has been simplified into a single layer, providing one boundary and a single set of statistics for each settlement.
means that BUASDs are gone (thank goodness) but they did give us wriggle room for contiguous settlements that asserted that they had absolutely nothing to with their neighbour across the street. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 21:25, 7 August 2023 (UTC)
It is not very encouraging when the "Understanding towns in England and Wales: an introduction" article advises The best approach to this in England and Wales is to use a version of the ONS 2011 Built-up areas – methodology and guidance (PDF, 682.8KB) subdivision geography. but the page linked does not exist.  --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 21:36, 7 August 2023 (UTC)
We are all going to have horror stories. The BUASDs may be gone in name but they are not gone in reality. At Figure 1: Explore population characteristics of individual BUAs: Usual resident population counts and median age, by individual BUA, England (excluding London) and Wales, 2021 in "Towns and cities, characteristics of built-up areas, England and Wales: Census 2021", I see that they have declared a BUA called "Milton Keynes" that doesn't include Bletchley. Before now, to give the population of MK, I could quote their overall BUA figure and ignore their BUASDs. Now it will be arguably OR if I sum the adjacent BUA figures. <expletive deleted> --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 21:58, 7 August 2023 (UTC)
Coming back to CE's first question, one of the key statements that the ONS makes is that they are ignoring administrative boundaries (except in London). If the continuous development crosses a boundary (e.g., Cambridge) then so be it. That means that any naming cannot be bound by such boundaries. That in turn means that we can't nest BUA figures under LA headings. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 08:33, 8 August 2023 (UTC)
Just going to have to use the district pop for Milton Keynes, an upside is they are looking at it every two years now so no more waiting over a decade. Chocolateediter (talk) 09:32, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

Looks like the boundaries of a lot of the former BUASDs are now completely changed for these new 2021 BUAs. Reading and Middlesbrough in particular have changed a lot. With Caversham (part of Reading's borough) having been seperated from Reading but Earley (outside the borough) isnt. And Eston has been seperated from Middlesbrough again (it was seperate for 2001, merged in 2011 and now seperate again). The Kirkby and Liverpool BUA boundaries area also really weird. There is a small chunk of what was once part of the Liverpool Urban Area that now counts as Kirkby instead, which follows the actual district boundaries but not the continuous urban-ness. Also a few previously seperate built-up areas are now included under others despite being more than 200m away even though they were sperate built-up areas in 2011. Also if you look at the KML files they have for all the built-up areas overlaid on google earth there is this weird line of near continuous built-up areas from London to Coventry via Aylesbury, which I can't explain because its clearly not urban on the satellite images. My personal opinion is that these new 2021 census Built up areas are useless. I think we should keep the existing articles on built-up areas unchanged. Tees Valley and Teesside dont need to be merged, they cover different areas, all of Teesside is in Tees Valley but Tees Valley includes areas outside Teesside. Eopsid (talk) 22:16, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

The conglomerations stuff hasnt been scrapped I emailed the ONS about it. They said the data on conglomerations is gonna be published somewhere between Winter 2023 and Spring 2024. Eopsid (talk) 17:34, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

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