Every dataset refresh, in time order.

NI lifestyle data now surfaces via HSC Trust adjacency

The 11 Northern Ireland LGD records had null lifestyle fields since launch. Adult lifestyle prevalence is published only at HSC Trust level (5 trusts), never at LGD2014 council level — per-LGD samples are too small. Confirmed against HSNI, NISRA Continuous Household Survey, Sport NI, HSCIMS, Census 2021 and APS that no UK statistical body publishes at LGD level.

The frontend now surfaces the parent HSC Trust’s five-indicator block on every NI LGD result panel and area page, with explicit “These belong to the HSC Trust, not [LGD name]” framing. Same editorial principle as the English district → county adjacency: parent values are never copied into the child record.

Trust-level data sourced from HSNI 2024/25 Trend Tables

• Smoking, obesity, physical activity, 5-a-day: 2023/24 period.
• Higher-risk drinking: 2022/23 period (question not asked in 2023/24).
• Two LGDs straddle Trust boundaries: Mid Ulster (Northern + Southern) and Newry, Mourne and Down (South Eastern + Southern). Both Trust figures are surfaced for these two with a footnote.

Welsh data refreshed, definitions harmonised

Welsh lifestyle data refreshed from Welsh Health Survey 2014–15 (11 years old) to National Survey for Wales 2019–20 (6 years old) for all 22 Welsh principal areas. The two definition mismatches that have been flagging Welsh values for months — pre-2016 daily-units drinking and 5×30 min/wk physical activity — both close in this refresh.

What changed

• Higher-risk drinking — Welsh column now uses >14 u/wk above-guideline (matches Fingertips 92778 and SHeS “Hazardous/Harmful drinker”).
• Physical activity — Welsh column now uses 150 min/wk MVPA (matches Fingertips 93014 and UK CMO).
• Obesity — Welsh column now uses BMI ≥ 25 “overweight or obese” (matches Fingertips 93088); Scotland still uses BMI ≥ 30, disclosed.
• Smoking and 5-a-day — values refreshed; definitions already matched.
• Source: StatsWales hlth5002 via the 14 Sep 2025 Wayback snapshot. Live URL retired in the 2025 stats.gov.wales migration.

District-level data, Scotland refresh, schema cleanup

The single biggest accuracy improvement since launch. Coverage on the four LTLA-publishing lifestyle indicators (smoking, obesity, physical activity, 5-a-day) jumped from 40 % to 97 % by adding a parallel Fingertips fetch at lower-tier-authority level. Scotland was refreshed end-to-end via the Scottish Government’s council-area Shiny dashboard. The dataset shape was tightened: non-council records dropped, country totals moved to a sibling block.

Coverage end state

What changed

• 164 English districts (E07) now carry their own Fingertips lifestyle figures rather than null. Canterbury shows Canterbury, not Kent.
• 32 Scottish councils refreshed across smoking (SSCQ 2023) + obesity / drinking / physical activity (SHeS 2019–2023, scraped via headless Camoufox) + 5-a-day (SHeS 2016–2019, the most recent council-area period).
• 91 non-council records dropped — NHS Integrated Care Boards, combined authorities, regions, and devolved-nation NHS health boards. None were ever returned by postcodes.io and none rendered. Country aggregates moved to _meta.country_totals.
• Definitions harmonised across England / Scotland / Wales for drinking (>14 units/wk) and physical activity (CMO 150 min/wk MVPA). Obesity remains BMI ≥ 25 in England Fingertips vs BMI ≥ 30 elsewhere — disclosed wherever shown.
• Pipeline updated — build_dataset.py now performs dual UTLA + LTLA Fingertips fetches plus an ONS LAD→CTY lookup, so future rebuilds preserve the backfill.
• Frontend — new county-adjacency block on postcode result panel for English districts. Strict editorial principle: parent-county values are NEVER copied into a district row in the data file. Inheritance is UI-only with explicit “belongs to Kent, not Canterbury” framing.
• New pages — /methodology/, /glossary/, /changelog/, plus per-area landing pages at /area/ (380 indexable URLs).

HLE backfill, deprivation lens, sources page

Lifemap goes public at lifemap.org.uk. Major data backfills bring HLE coverage to 49 %; nine post-2019 English UTLAs (Cumberland, Westmorland & Furness, post-2023 North Yorkshire and Somerset, Buckinghamshire, North and West Northamptonshire, Barnsley, Sheffield) are added via Fingertips indicator 90362 (2021–2023). A new deprivation lens on the homepage uses ONS’s 15 April 2026 release; a public /sources/ page audits every external URL.

Highlights

• HLE source switched for English UTLAs from ONS HSLE 2016–2018 (frozen) to OHID Fingertips 90362 (2021–2023). Welsh, Scottish and NI UTLAs continue on the older series until newer LA-level data is published.
• Higher-risk drinking switched from indicator 94185 (Government Office Region only) to 92778 (above-guideline, UTLA-level). Coverage jumped from 8 % to 40 %.
• Choropleth boundaries updated from 2022 to December 2024 ONS UTLA boundaries; map.js performs slug-fallback joins for the 2024 South Yorkshire renumbering.
• Story page, press kit, deprivation chart, brand mark, mobile padding, embed widget, OG images all shipped.

Initial dataset and site

Earlier builds focused on the data pipeline (LE / HLE / Fingertips), the static-page frontend, the postcode lookup, the comparison view, and an early choropleth map. See the full engineering history in CHANGELOG.md for line-level detail.