This is the number of people living in the council's area, as pre-filled by Defra each quarter. It says nothing about performance by itself; its job is to turn raw totals into fair per-person comparisons, such as kilograms of waste per resident. A bigger population simply means more waste and more spend, which is why dividing by it makes councils of different sizes comparable.
| name | population |
|---|---|
| dataset | 12-wastedataflow |
| kind | extracted |
| type | numeric |
| unit | persons |
| grain | council-quarter |
| role | denominator |
| source | Waste_Collection_data_England_2024-25.csv — filter QuestionNumber == 'Q001', RowText == 'Population of Authority', value in Data |
| period | 2024-25 (quarterly; 2023-24 file also present) |
| missingness | Defra-prefilled per authority per quarter; stable across quarters. No collection/disposal caveat — populations are per authority regardless of type. |
| score_note | Pure denominator duplicating ONS population present across the other datasets. |
| peer_group | council class (district / county / unitary / metropolitan / London) — not yet scored on the leaderboard |
Population of the authority, prefilled by Defra in the quarterly returns. Useful as a denominator when normalising the raw tonnage questions (e.g. Q010 kerbside tonnages by material) without an external population join. Values are stable within a year.