Changing the International Territorial Level geography for Scotland: consultation
The International Territorial Levels (ITLs) are geographic boundaries used in the production of statistics in the United Kingdom. The purpose of this consultation is to seek views on proposed changes to these geographies in Scotland.
How ITL geographies are currently used
Currently there appears to be limited demand for statistics at ITL2 or ITL3 level. As a result, the Scottish Government currently publishes very little data at these geographical levels.
Prior to the United Kingdom leaving the European Union, the main usage of statistics using NUTS geographies resulted from the requirement to submit a range of regional statistics to Eurostat, the statistics agency of the European Union. Statistics provided to Eurostat were used to formulate regional policy initiatives and determine regional funding allocations. For example, €941 Million of Structural and Investment Funds were allocated over 7 years (from 2014 to 2020) to NUTS2 regions in Scotland.
Following the departure of the UK from the European Union, the UK is no longer required to provide statistics to the European Union and is no longer eligible for EU Structural and Investment Funds. For this reason, demand for statistics using the ITL geography has declined.
The UK remains a member of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). As a requirement of this membership, the ONS submits UK wide economic statistics to the OECD using the ITL geographies. These include statistics related to a range of topic areas including economic, demographic, labour force and education statistics. These statistics are published on the OECD’s Data Explorer. Currently, the difficulty of producing some statistics due to the non-alignment of ITL boundaries with local authorities prevents ONS from submitting some variables.
Outside of these international commitments, a small number of Scottish Government statistical publication currently use the ITL geographies. For example, National Records of Scotland publish mid-year population estimates using ITL geographies, and ITLs will be included in Census 2022 outputs published later in 2024. Some agricultural statistics are also produced using ITL regions, such as annual cereal and oilseed rape harvest estimates.
The Office for National Statistics also uses ITL geography when producing UK wide statistics on policy areas reserved to the UK Government. In this case the ITL geography facilitates comparisons between regions within the UK.
Examples of ONS publications that use the ITL geographies include:
- Regional Accounts
- Subregional Productivity
- Subregional productivity in the UK
- Experimental regional gross fixed capital formation (GFCF) estimates by asset type
- International trade in UK nations, regions and cities
- Local sites and numbers of employees linked to companies involved in international trade in services by subnational areas of the UK
- Regional labour market: local indicators for ITL3 geography
- Gross Fixed Capital Formation
- Trade
- Labour Market statistics
Future use of ITL Geographies
Although demand for statistics at ITL2 and ITL3 level is currently limited, it is hoped that the ITL geographies will be used more frequently in future.
While statistics are no longer submitted to Eurostat, we expect there will be continued interest within Scottish Government in making international comparisons for the development of internal policy. International comparisons will also contribute to the public good by allowing international comparisons to inform public debate. Making the population of regions more balanced and aligned with international standards will increase its usefulness for this purpose.
By aligning ITL boundaries to local authority boundaries, we anticipate that producing statistics using ITL geographies will be much easier, and therefore make their use more frequent.
Impact on comparability
Making changes to ITL boundaries will have an impact on the comparability of data over time, making it difficult for users to tell if a difference in statistics is genuine or a result of the change in geography.
Given that ITL geographies are not currently widely used we anticipate that the impact of changing boundaries will be small. However, statistics producers will be required to make clear to users the impact of boundary changes on time series. Producers may also wish to consider producing revised estimates for earlier years using the new boundaries where possible.
Impact on existing users
Changes to ITL boundaries may have an impact on existing users who use statistics based on existing boundaries. Because the ITL geographies are general purpose geographies, and because many policies are delivered and statistics gathered at local authority level, we consider the advantages of aligning with local authority boundaries outweigh the disadvantages. This is because aligning ITL boundaries with local authorities will make it much easier to produce regional statistics for a wide range of topics by combining readily available statistics already produced at local authority level.
However, in some cases there may still be a strong user need for statistics to be produced for regional geographies that do not align with local authority boundaries.
To ensure that the proposed changes do not negatively impact on existing users it will be important that statistics producers, including Scottish Government and the Office for National Statistics, continue to publish statistics using alternative geographies where there is a clear user need. This might also include publishing statistics using small area geographies, such as data zones, that users can combine into higher geographies as required.
As a result, this consultation also seeks to understand how existing statistics are used, and what statistics producers can do to ensure that user needs continue to be met.
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