You asked

In the 2001 Census, Milton Keynes (the city rather than the Borough) was fragmented. In the 2011 Census, it appears as though the entity "Milton Keynes built up area" (id=1119885224) is only three quarters of it.

  1. Why was Milton Keynes split up in this manner for the 2011 census?

  2. Have the output areas for the 2022 census been defined yet? If so, do you intend to rectify that 2011 error?

  3. When the 2011 census was published, there were newspaper reports of a "Milton Keynes built-up area" (i.e., not 1119885224) that included Bletchley, the fragment of Milton Keynes above, Newport Pagnell (1119884932) and Woburn Sands (1119884061). I have seen the figure used in Centre for Cities reports but I am unable to find it on your website. Do you acknowledge this entity or has someone else done the adding up? If yours, where can I find it, please?

We said

Thank you for your Freedom of Information request.

In the 2011 census, Built-up Areas (BUA) were defined as built-up land with a minimum area of 20 hectares (200,000 m2 ), with settlements within 200 metres of each other linked. Built-up area sub-divisions (BUASD) were also identified to provide greater detail in the data in larger urban areas.

Milton Keynes BUA (geography code E34005056) consists of 4 separate BUASD’s, namely Bletchley BUASD (E35000902), Milton Keynes BUASD (E35001516), Newport Pagnell BUASD (E35001223) and Woburn Sands BUASD (E35000347).

In other words, the Built Up Area of Milton Keynes does include Bletchley. Data for BUAs are available in the Census tables on Nomisweb, as well as for selected other datasets. For more information, the boundaries of both BUA and BUASDs can be found on our Geography portal and details of how the BUA and BUASD are produced can be found in the 2011 Built-up Areas - Methodology and Guidance publication.

https://www.nomisweb.co.uk/
http://geoportal.statistics.gov.uk/
http://geoportal.statistics.gov.uk/datasets?q=Built-up%20Areas%3A%20User%20Guidance&sort=name

I hope this explanation is useful in detailing the process involved and confirming that the existing 2011 definition of Milton Keynes Built Up Area does include the Bletchley area.