WRITTEN ON March 3rd, 2005 BY Richard S AND STORED IN Uncategorized
According to the media, we are deep in snow and ice; we must travel only if essential. Doubtless some areas have severe weather, but here it is another glorious sunny morning: Blue sky, black roofs, green grass and clear windscreens: The weather forecast was a classic demonstration of poor geographical descriptions of English regions.
Standardizing the descriptions of English regions may seem unnecessary and far too trivial; however, geography is fundamental to many e-government and e-commerce services as well as to more traditional goods and services. Whenever we look outside our immediate locality, the current confusion leads to poor decisions, lost opportunities and lost business.
I live (mostly) on the borders of Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire. Council tax and business rates go to Bedfordshire and Mid Beds, but the local hospital and main towns are in Hertfordshire. My village has “Stevenage” postcodes, but nearby villages have “Milton Keynes” postcodes. TV comes from Norwich and Cambridge, or London.
East-west travel is notoriously difficult, except by car. The nearby East Coast Main Line (at a price) makes north-south travel to Peterborough or London faster than travel to our county town of Bedford. Many people commute south to work, clogging the roads but also bringing potential custom.
Many public authorities, directories and web sites subdivide the UK into arbitrary zones. There is very little standardization or logic in definitions or borders of these zones.
What should I enter into the search engines: Bedfordshire? Hertfordshire? South East? East Anglia? East? South? South Midlands? Midlands? England? UK?
Similarly, when advertising the company’s details in directories, how should I describe our location?
Postcodes are useful for precise location, especially in conjunction with Internet mapping, but do not solve the wider problem. Arbitrary algorithms such as searching within 25 miles of a postcode do not reflect road or travel patterns. Various GIS suppliers seem not to have the answer.
Is there an answer to this problem, or perhaps a small coherent set of answers which suit the various different needs? Should an “ideal” government impose a solution?
3 Responses to “Where Am I? Which English Region?”
I’ve always thought that there is a serious problem which is caused by the willingness of the UK to reorganise boundaries. It may be done for political reasons, to try to create roughly equal populations and thus produce ‘sensible’ service delivery areas but it causes numerous problems.
Social – people do have emotional and traditional links to ‘their’ place. cf Humberside and Yorkshire.
Planning – It makes it very difficult to produce consistent statistics when boundary changes affect the collection areas.
Consistency – the capacity of organisations to decide not to be co-terminous with existing boundaries at whatever level.
The rest of the world seems to be willing to allow small and large administrative areas to exist thus allowing government to reflect the people rather than forcing the people into a construct that they resent.
Gareth
(Living in Monmouthshire but with everybody’s address system still insisting on Gwent although that has long been abolished and was based on the old Monmouthshire which bore no relationship to today’s borders and was in any event a creation of…..)
Thanks Gareth. Presumably, travel in your area is heavily influenced by the roads and rivers etc.
Is it possible to devise a single set of geographical descriptions which work effectively for both government and business?
My neighbours have very different ideas about their reasonable “travel to work,” “travel to shop” and “travel to visit” distances and destinations.
But, even a partial solution, even an arbitrary one imposed by government would ease some of the present confusion.
Perhaps then I would not be asked to commute daily to Doncaster or Dover!
Perhaps “Someone” was listening: I still don’t know where I am, but today we have white skies, white roofs, white grass and white windscreens.