Summary

Description

Local Administrative Units (LAU) - Level 1 are part of the Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS) hierarchical classification of UK areas created by the European Office Statistics (Eurostat) in order to produce regional statistics which are comparable across the European Union. There are 3 NUTS levels moving from larger to smaller areas, NUTS 1 is Scotland, NUTS 2 divides Scotland into 4 areas and NUTS 3 divides Scotland into 23 areas. NUTS areas are stable and are only amended periodically. NUTS 4 and NUTS 5 have been superseded by Local Administrative Units (LAU), which were introduced in July 2003 as there was a requirement for statistics at local level which were compatible with NUTS. LAUs are amended to reflect administrative boundary changes. LAU boundaries were created by National Records of Scotland (NRS) from existing geographies. LAU Level 1 (formerly NUTS level 4) are Council Areas, Local Enterprise Companies (LECs) or a combination of both. Scotland is covered by 41 LAU1 areas.