Urban Extents for Cities, Towns and Villages - Great Britain: Open Built Up Areas

## Introduction

OS Open Built Up Areas is a dataset representing the built-up areas of Great Britain. It was designed primarily to underpin the statistical analysis that contributes to policy enablement across the public sector.

Coverage: Great Britain

Format: Vector

Scale: 1:1250 to 1:250,000

Update Cycle: Every two years in April

Last Updated: April 2024

Release Note: [https://docs.os.uk/os-downloads/addressing-and-location/os-open-built-up-areas/release-notes/april-2024](https://docs.os.uk/os-downloads/addressing-and-location/os-open-built-up-areas/release-notes/april-2024)

## What's in this product?

Built Up Areas: This is the aggregation of Built Up Extents and Non Built Up Extents. This is a multipart area feature with a single Government Statistical Service (GSS) code and name or names.

Built Up Extents: This is the representation of built-up areas only within the extent of Built Up Areas. This is the area that remains after Non Built Up Extents have been removed from Built Up Areas. This is a multipart area feature with the same GSS code as the related Built Up Areas with the same name or names.

Non Built Up Extents: This is the representation of non-built-up areas within the extent of Built Up Areas. This is a multipart area feature with the same GSS code as the related Built Up Areas with the same name or names.

## What is its value?

Open Built Up Areas creates value for customers in a variety of ways including:

1. Analysing census data to understand the characteristics of built up areas and output a range of statistics, informing government policy.
2. Monitor your data related to Built Up Areas over time to improve your understanding of economic, social and environmental factors. You can also track changes or policy delivery to improve your planning and services.
3. Enabling policy makers and analysts, both nationally and locally, to conduct analysis corresponding to actual urban extents such as those of towns, cities and villages. They allow economic, social and environmental issues to be understood on the basis of the actual settlements that most people in Great Britain live in and in doing so aide in the design and implementation of policy areas such as levelling-up and Net-Zero.

## Case Studies

Creating access to green space statistics for the Office of National Statistics: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/access-to-green-space-in-england/access-to-green-space-in-england

Greening UK towns and cities through the Green Infrastructure Framework for Natural England: https://designatedsites.naturalengland.org.uk/GreenInfrastructure/Home.aspx