Data Collection (Postcodes) (Hansard, 27 February 1997)

§ Mr. Barnes
To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what use his Department and its agencies make of postcode areas for the collection of data and in formulas for the distribution of grants and awards; and when such usages were last reviewed. [14807]

§ Lord James Douglas-Hamilton
The information is as follows:
390W
(e) non-equity partners, (f) salaried assistants and (g) general practitioner registrars in vocational training were (i) male and (ii) female in each of the last five years. [17928]

§ Mr. Hague
This information is shown in the table. Data for general practitioner fundholders and non-fundholders are not centrally available by gender.
Collection of data:
Postcodes are used for collating data in the following cases: compilation of the Scottish Register of Employment, a register of manufacturing units in Scotland with 11 or more employees; analysis of further education college students by geographical origin—eg Scottish, rest of UK; as a building block by general register office in the collection of statistics on vital events and in the census of population.
In general, statistical surveys conducted by the Scottish Office will incorporate post code units as a geographic indicator. These will be used primarily to aggregate the data into higher order statistics—eg local authorities.
Distribution of grants:
For the purpose of rural grant schemes, the definition of rural Scotland relies to some extent on post code sectors. The definition is used with the proviso that people can still apply for grants if their locality is distinctly rural even if, by the arbitrary application of post codes, their area is classed as urban. Rural grants schemes are currently under review.
Although support to local authorities is not distributed on the basis of postcode areas, some limited data, originally collected by other departments and agencies by postcode area and then aggregated to local authority units by the Scottish Office, are used in the calculation of certain grant-aided expenditure assessments. Such processes are continually reviewed by the Department and the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities.