The Department for Transport's vehicle statistics team has recently released to me a DVLA dataset containing counts of licensed vehicles for small areas of the UK, based on 2011 Census geography.
The data was disclosed in response to an FOI and re-use request. You can download the dataset, along with my correspondence with DfT: F0020605 data and correspondence (redacted).zip.
The vehicle counts are calculated to 2021 Quarter 3. The data is similar to table VEH0122 in the official statistics, which provides counts by body type and postcode district. I requested data based on Census geography because that is more useful for comparison with statistics from other sources.
DfT has provided counts by Output Area and, in a separate table, by LSOA/DZ/SOA. The data is in the following format:
| OA11CD | Cars | Motorcycles | Others |
|---|---|---|---|
| E00000024 | 80 | 5 | 29 |
| E00042155 | 355 | 6 | 209 |
| E00042425 | 119 | c | 6 |
| E00042436 | 53 | 0 | c |
| E00167301 | 152 | 8 | 16 |
Regrettably, DfT has suppressed values between 1 and 4. DfT maintains this information is exempt from release under section 40(2) of the FOI Act because its release "would be likely to lead to identification of individuals if pieced together with other information."
That seems unlikely to me.
I have requested permission from DfT to re-use the disclosed data under the terms of the Open Government Licence. DfT has said that the dataset "can be freely used and shared openly", that the data "can be used for any purpose by any person or organisation", and, in an internal review response, that "the Open Government Licence v3 allows" me to re-use the information. However, DfT has also said that the extract of data "belongs to" the DVLA and that the DfT statistics team responded to my information requests "on behalf of" the DVLA.
Currently, I am not completely confident that DfT has granted me permission to re-use the data under the OGL. Please bear that in mind if you use the data.
The chart below is a quick example of analysis using the data. The chart shows the average number of cars registered per domestic property in LSOAs in England and Wales, calculated by comparing the DVLA vehicle counts with counts of domestic properties in VOA statistics.
Update 24 May 2022:
DfT/DVLA has published vehicle licensing statistics for Q4 2021, including a CSV download of counts for each quarter back to 2009, by licensing type, body type, and LSOA.
As in the earlier FOI release, values between 1 and 4 have been suppressed. However, the Q4 release is unambiguously open data because DVLA has published the data on a GOV.UK page that includes an Open Government Licence notice in the footer.
Update 4 December 2022:
Following an ICO decision notice, DfT has provided an updated table of Output Area counts for Q3 2021 with the suppressed values restored. I have written a new blog post, with a link to the data.