Parishes are small administrative areas, used only in England.  Cumbria has over 250 parishes in total. Parishes are subject to frequent boundary change, which can make it difficult to compare data over time. It is also important to note that some urban areas of the county do not sit within parishes. As a result, parish data is becoming less widely used since the introduction of Lower Super Output Areas (LSOAs) and there are no longer many data sets available at parish level.

Approximate Census figures for parishes can be built up from Output Areas. The Nomis website  allows users to view Census key statistics tables for local areas including parishes. To access these reports, please visit:

2011 Census data was also incorporated into ‘Parish Profile Reports’ commissioned by Action with Communities in Rural England (ACRE) and produced by Oxford Consultants for Social Inclusion (OCSI). To access these profiles, please visit:

Parishes often sit within ward and LSOA boundaries, but can also extend across ward and LSOA boundaries. Therefore, it can be difficult to accumulate data at these commonly used geographical levels to fit parish boundaries. Instead, it is useful to consider the profiles of the wards or LSOAs that parishes fall fully or partially within, to get an understanding of the characteristics of the area that the parish covers.

For lists of Cumbria’s parishes with the wards / LSOAs that they sit fully or partially within, the proportion of each ward / LSOAs population that live within each parish and the proportion of each parish’s population that live within each ward / LSOA, please click on the links below:

To view statistical profiles for Cumbria’s wards and LSOAs, please visit the following pages: