Townsend Deprivation Index (2011)

Townsend Deprivation Index (2011)#

Last modified: 01 Jun 2026

UK LLC provides a 2011 version of the Townsend Deprivation Index for England and Wales at the Census Lower Super Output Area level (or equivalent).
More information about this dataset is available here.

Townsend Index#

The Townsend index (1989) is a relative indicator of material deprivation, which has been widely used to identify socio‐economic confounding in crime, education, and health research in England. This dataset is a 2011 version of the Townsend Index, created at the UK Data Service.

1. Summary#

townsend_2011_england_wales

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Dataset Descriptor Dataset-specific Information
Name of Dataset in TRE PLACE_townsend_2011_england_wales
Citation (APA) Office for National Statistics; National Records of Scotland; Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency; UK Data Service.. (2025). Place based data: Townsend Index (2011) England Wales. UK Longitudinal Linkage Collaboration (UK LLC). https://doi.org/10.71760/ukllc-dataset-00473-01
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Owner UK Data Service
Authors Sanah Yousaf, Amy Bonsall (UK Data Service)
Temporal Coverage 01/2011 - 12/2011
Geographical Coverage England, Wales
Participant Count None
Number of Variables 4
Number of Observations 34753
Key Link https://guidebook.ukllc.ac.uk/docs/linked_geo_data/population_datasets/townsend/townsend
Keywords townsend,index,deprivation
Latest Extract Date TBC
Specific Restrictions to Data Use None
Build a Data Request https://explore.ukllc.ac.uk/

townsend_2011_scotland

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Dataset Descriptor Dataset-specific Information
Name of Dataset in TRE PLACE_townsend_2011_scotland
Citation (APA) Office for National Statistics; National Records of Scotland; Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency; UK Data Service.. (2025). Place based data: Townsend Index (2011) Scotland. UK Longitudinal Linkage Collaboration (UK LLC). https://doi.org/10.71760/ukllc-dataset-00474-01
Download Citation Citeproc JSON     BibTeX     RIS
Owner UK Data Service
Authors Sanah Yousaf, Amy Bonsall (UK Data Service)
Temporal Coverage 01/2011 - 12/2011
Geographical Coverage Scotland
Participant Count None
Number of Variables 4
Number of Observations 6976
Key Link https://guidebook.ukllc.ac.uk/docs/linked_geo_data/population_datasets/townsend/townsend
Keywords townsend,index,deprivation
Latest Extract Date TBC
Specific Restrictions to Data Use None
Build a Data Request https://explore.ukllc.ac.uk/

townsend_2011_northern_ireland

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Dataset Descriptor Dataset-specific Information
Name of Dataset in TRE PLACE_townsend_2011_northern_ireland
Citation (APA) Office for National Statistics; National Records of Scotland; Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency; UK Data Service.. (2025). Place based data: Townsend Index (2011) Northern Ireland. UK Longitudinal Linkage Collaboration (UK LLC). https://doi.org/10.71760/ukllc-dataset-00475-01
Download Citation Citeproc JSON     BibTeX     RIS
Owner UK Data Service
Authors Sanah Yousaf, Amy Bonsall (UK Data Service)
Temporal Coverage 01/2011 - 12/2011
Geographical Coverage Northern Ireland
Participant Count None
Number of Variables 4
Number of Observations 890
Key Link https://guidebook.ukllc.ac.uk/docs/linked_geo_data/population_datasets/townsend/townsend
Keywords townsend,index,deprivation
Latest Extract Date TBC
Specific Restrictions to Data Use None
Build a Data Request https://explore.ukllc.ac.uk/

2. Variables#

townsend_2011_england_wales

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Variable Group Variable Description Source Date range of data
UK LLC avail_from_dt label not available UK Longitudinal Linkage Collaboration None
Geography lsoa11cd_e label not available Office for National Statistics 2011
Geography rgn11nm Devolved nation within the United Kingdom: Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales and English Regions Office for National Statistics 2011
Deprivation townsend_index_2011 The 'Townsend index' converted into quintiles (5 classes). Quintile 1 represents 20% of the LSOA communities that were considered the least deprived in 2011. UK Data Service 2011

townsend_2011_scotland

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Variable Group Variable Description Source Date range of data
UK LLC avail_from_dt label not available UK Longitudinal Linkage Collaboration None
Geography dz11cd_e label not available gov.scot 2011
Geography rgn11nm Devolved nation within the United Kingdom: Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales and English Regions Office for National Statistics 2011
Deprivation townsend_index_2011 The 'Townsend index' converted into quintiles (5 classes). Quintile 1 represents 20% of the DZ communities that were considered the least deprived in 2011. UK Data Service 2011

townsend_2011_northern_ireland

Hide Information
Variable Group Variable Description Source Date range of data
UK LLC avail_from_dt label not available UK Longitudinal Linkage Collaboration None
Geography rgn11nm Devolved nation within the United Kingdom: Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales and English Regions Office for National Statistics 2011
Geography soa11cd_e label not available Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency 2011
Deprivation townsend_index_2011 The 'Townsend index' converted into quintiles (5 classes). Quintile 1 represents 20% of the SOA communities that were considered the least deprived in 2011. UK Data Service 2011

3. Metrics#

TBC

4. Version History#

TBC

5. Documentation#

We are currently building a documentation storage system which will host useful documents related to datasets and data owners. We will surface these documents on Guidebook.

6. Useful Syntax#

Below we will include syntax that may be helpful to other researchers in the UK LLC TRE. For longer scripts, we will include a snippet of the code plus a link to the UK LLC GitHub repository where you can find the full scripts.

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