Understanding English Places

Think you know your town? Think again

From Data to Place : The single source of facts on England's towns and cities

Benchmark your town or city and find similar places

Democratising access to data and unlocking high-value place intelligence for every budget on all 3,463 villages, towns and cities in England with a population of 1,000 or more. Understanding English Places (UEP) is accessible through an easy to use and understand interactive portal via a low-cost subscription.

Covers 3463 places, with a total population of 54.5M

Over 150,000 population

73 places

20.7M population

15-150,000 population

572 places

22.8M population

3-15,000 population

1222 places

8.3M population

1-3,000 population

1596 places

2.8M population

Map of places
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Jump straight to a place profile

Start typing a place name and choose a match.

Browse places

Explore the directories

View browse overview
Places A–ZBrowse every place alphabetically.Coastal townsExplore England’s coastal places.By local authority districtFind places within a local authority district.By countyFind places within a London borough, county or unitary authority.By regionBrowse places across England’s regions.By combined authoritySee places represented by each combined authority.
WHY THIS MATTERS

Evidence-based

decisions, not anecdotes

Peer comparison

to learn from similar places

Independent baseline

to evaluate investment

Pride in Place

grounded in shared facts

METHODOLOGICAL FRAMEWORK

Defining, clustering, and profiling England's 3,463 places through open-source data

By synthesizing open-source data across 3,463 places (every town and city in England with a population of 1,000 or more), the UEP provides a comprehensive, baseline profile of our nation's local economies.

Unlike administrative boundaries, which often mask the reality of how people live and work, the UEP model is built on "lived and local" geographies. It allows for:

  • Evidence-Based Policy: Providing local authorities with immediate access to robust data on their town's socio-demographic profile, asset provision (health, retail, education), and connectivity.
  • Peer-to-Peer Benchmarking: Through its unique clustering system, the model allows a town to identify "peer" places across the country, enabling them to learn what works, share best practices, and benchmark their performance against similar areas.
  • Effective Resource Deployment: By providing a clear baseline of need and capacity, the model ensures that central and local government capital is deployed where it will have the highest economic impact, preventing the "dust-gathering" reports of the past.

An initial Understanding English Places (UEP) Model has been developed for towns in England, based on the framework and methodology of the Understanding Scottish Places (USP) Model (https://www.usp.scot/) and taking learnings from an Understanding Irish Places (UIP) Model implemented by Didobi in 2025. The UEP is driven by English data and configured to reflect the place assets and relationships across England.

The spatial framework for the UEP Model covers 3,430 places with a population over 1,000, based on a best-fit assignment carried out by Didobi of Output Areas (OAs) to the 2022 Built-Up Area (BUA) boundaries defined for the 2021 Census (ONS), which ensures consistency and comparability between places.

For completeness the UEP Model also includes the 33 London Boroughs, which each represent a BUA, making a total of 3,463 places within the UEP.

Read or download the UEP one-page summary and methodology documents.

ABOUT

Understanding English Places

This work was carried out by Didobi Ltd (Matthew Hopkinson) and Edge Analytics Ltd (Julia Williams, Chris Duley).

For further information or to gain access to UEP please contact hello@didobi.com.