Create Counties in Local Insight

Creating counties as custom areas is a useful way to view data for them across Local Insight. Once counties have been set up as custom areas you can:

• Explore data for the area on the dashboard
• Create a report for the area
• Take a look at the area on the map and overlay indicators

Step by step Guide to set up Counties:

• To set a county up in Local Insight you need to know the Local Authorities which make up that county. If you are unsure of the component Local Authorities, you can use The Open Geography portal from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

Please note: 

• If you already know which Local Authorities make up your county then you can skip to the Create the county in Local Insight heading further down this article.

Use The Open Geography portal to get the component areas for a County

• Go onto The Open Geography portal website, click on the Lookups tab, select Administrative Lookups and open the Local Authority Districts to Counties page (direct link to page here).

Open the most recent Lookup and click on the Data tab to open the Lookup table (see 1 in the image below).

You can now download the whole Lookup Table to Excel (see 2 in the image above) or filter the table on the site (see 3 in the image above).

In the below example, I have filtered for the county East Sussex in the column CTY21NM, In order to view the list of component Local Authorities which fall under East Sussex.

Creating a County in Local Insight:

User Permissions note:

Only Group Admin and Power Users can create custom areas

1. Navigate to the custom areas page by clicking Group Admin on the top of the tool bar > Manage Custom Areas
2. Click Add custom areas
3. Name your custom area (this must be unique, you cannot have areas with the same name)
4. Provide a description. The description is optional but it is a useful way to explain to others within your organisation how and why the area was created
5. Categorise your area. If your group has categories set up you can assign this new area to one of the categories available
6. Select Based on standard area for the Area type (see 1 in the image below)
7. Select LA in the drop down list (see 2 in the image below)
8. Then select all the component Local Authorities for the county you are creating  (see 3 in the image below)
9. Once you have selected all the Local Authorities, click the blue icon titled Save Custom Area