A regional dilemma

Articles published on communityni.org can be classified using multiple themes and regions. We would like to hear your ideas on the best way to group areas in Northern Ireland within this system. We set out some options below.

NUTS

Currently Northern Ireland is divided into five NUTS III sub-regions: Belfast, Outer Belfast, East of NI, North of NI and West and South of NI. This is part of a European Commission classification used for things like labour force surveys. NUTS stands for Nomenclature of Units for Territorial Statistics (NUTS).

Within each of the NUTS sub-regions sit a number of district councils, below which are a greater number of wards and within each ward are a number of census output areas (around 120 households). This classification system is best described as a Russian doll with each level fitting neatly inside the other.

We realise that this method of regionalising content may not be the most intuitive - for example, you may not think 'North of Northern Ireland' if you are searching communityni.org for an event or organisation in Ballycastle.

We are open to suggestions about a better way to do it - we know this system is far from perfect.

Districts

At present there are 26 District Councils in Northern Ireland. They have the advantage of being better known than NUTS III since they are real units and almost everyone knows what district they live in. People would know exactly where to look to find local information.

On the other hand, these units may be too small for classifying information and they vary greatly in size - Belfast, for example, is far bigger than Moyle. Looking to the longer term, the Review of Public Administration is proposing that the number of District Councils should be cut, perhaps to as few as seven.

The RPA has also proposed changes in the number of health and education boards and this has fuelled a debate on how exactly Northern Ireland is governed. If the number of health boards and the number of district councils is the same (seven) and the boundaries are identical, this will strengthen the case for using them as the new classification system - but that is several years down the line.

Counties

Most people know what county they live in. Counties do not have any administrative significance but that does not mean we cannot use them to classify information. The number of counties (six) is small enough to be a useful means of grouping articles and events on the portal. In addition, we can use a variation of seven units by using the six counties plus Belfast.

The geographic boundaries of Northern Ireland have never been so debated and written about as now!

So what do you think?

We want to hear from you. All comments received before Friday 29 April 2005 will be taken into consideration. Based on your views, we will try to reach a consensus on which is the most popular method for classifying areas in Northern Ireland and will implement it on communityni.org.

Send your suggestions using 'Have your say'.