County Durham is largely a rural area with around 57% of its area classified as rural in nature and a further 32% classified as rural town and fringe, based upon the 2011 Rural-Urban classification for Lower Super Output Areas (LSOAs).
The Rural-Urban Classification (RUC) categorises a range of small area geographies on the basis of physical settlement and related characteristics. In its original form, the RUC was developed for a consortium of government agencies for use with the 2001 Census and then revised following the 2011 Census for a similar consortium including the Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG), the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), the Office of National Statistics (ONS) and the Welsh Government (WG).
RUC in itself includes no statistical data, but provides categorical attributes for the members of these small area geographies.
The following links and sections provide further information and statistics for County Durham based upon the 2011 RUC:
Spreadsheet: Rural-urban classification County Durham (xlxs; 1.1Mb)
(2017 Population by main age groups and by area for the the 2011 Census Output Areas (OAs), Lower and Middle SOAs, Area Action Partnership, Clinical Commissioning Groups and Localities and other main geographical service areas.)
Web Map: Rural-Urban Web Map for County Durham
(Web map showing the OA and LSOA Rural-Urban classification across County Durham)
Statistics by RUC: NOMIS
(2011 Census data by OA, LSOA and MSOA by RUC)
Further Information: 2011 Rural Urban Classification (GOV.UK)
Population
The following is based on the 2011 RUC for Lower Super Output Areas (LSOAs).
County Durham covers an area of 222,606 hectares (2021) and has an estimated population of 522,100 (ONS 2021 Census).
Nearly 57% of the county is classified as ‘Rural‘ and is home to just 7.2% (around 37,500 people) of the county’s total population, giving a population density of 0.3 people per hectare. Within areas classified as ‘Rural Town & Fringe‘ these figures are 36.7% of the resident population living in 32.1% of the county with a population density of 2.7%.
The remainder of the county is classified as ‘Urban’ where 56.1% of the county’s population live in 10.9% of the county’s area, giving a population density figure of 12.1 people per hectare.
Further information on the population of County Durham is available in the ‘Population‘ theme.
The documents we publish on this page are either legally required to be made available for inspection, for information and analysis purposes or may have been supplied by the public and so in some cases may not be fully accessible. If, for any reason, you cannot access the documents and need an alternative format, please email ina@durham.gov.uk.