Carl Baker
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carlbaker.bsky.social
Carl Baker
@carlbaker.bsky.social
610 followers 250 following 160 posts
Head of the Social and General Statistics team at the House of Commons Library in the UK Parliament. Personal account for posts on stats, maps, dataviz, games, travel, and misc.
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Reposted by Carl Baker
commonslibrary.bsky.social
What is the Budget? https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/what-is-the-budget/
November 6, 2025 at 3:10 PM
Reposted by Carl Baker
commonslibrary.bsky.social
Constituency data - Indices of deprivation https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/constituency-data-indices-of-deprivation/
November 6, 2025 at 9:51 AM
Reposted by Carl Baker
clairesewell.bsky.social
The House of Commons Library Open Day returns in 2026!

Come and learn about what we do to inform democracy and take advantage of a rare chance to tour the Commons Library space.

Full details are on our website and applications close 24th November commonslibrary.parliament.uk/training-and...
House of Commons Library Open Day
We are pleased to invite librarians, library staff and information officers to the House of Commons Library Open Day 2026.
commonslibrary.parliament.uk
October 27, 2025 at 1:54 PM
Reposted by Carl Baker
owenboswarva.bsky.social
Indefinite delay to the next release of detailed tables in the Valuation Office Agency's Council Tax Stock of Properties statistics – a valuable source of small area attributes for housing stock in England and Wales www.gov.uk/government/s...

#UKhousing #govtech #proptech #opendata
3.5. Council Tax Stock of Properties Added September 2025 The VOA has been moving its Council Tax work onto a new, modern, operating system. The data provision for statistics is also being updated and iterated as part of this work. As a result, we plan to release a shorter publication containing key headline stock figures for each billing authority, broken down by band, during autumn 2025, rather than the full suite of official statistics we typically publish. This means that tables on insertions, deletions and time series, will be available later, once the data provision updates are completed and assured for official statistics production. We will provide a further update on the timeline for publishing insertions and deletions, as well as plans for changes and improvements to the overall publication, in due course.
September 16, 2025 at 8:57 PM
Reposted by Carl Baker
fantasticlife.bsky.social
In which we bid farewell to Professor Michael Rush. A kind, generous and gentle man. More notes from @anyaso.bsky.social and I:

ukparliament.github.io/ontologies/m...
2025 - Week 36
Work in progress to design data models for UK Parliament
ukparliament.github.io
September 8, 2025 at 5:50 PM
Reposted by Carl Baker
firthstat.bsky.social
At next week's RSS conference I'll be presenting a poster (a first for me...it's about time!)

"Tetraplot displays of UK General Election results" shows how to graph GE 2024 vote shares across 4 parties in a useful way.

Full PDF poster at:
github.com/DavidFirth/t...
Image of a poster to be presented at the Royal Statistical Society conference in Edinburgh, September 2025. The main point is to generalize the idea of a ternary plot to handle 4-part compositions, by showing views through the triangular faces of a tetrahedron. The data shown are vote counts from England, Scotland and Wales in the UK General Election of July 2024.
August 26, 2025 at 4:11 PM
Reposted by Carl Baker
fantasticlife.bsky.social
Our psephological efforts now come complete with by-elections from Parliament 56. Or the one following the 2015 general election, as normal people might say
electionresults.parliament.uk/parliament-p...
UK Parliament election results: 56th Parliament of the United Kingdom
The 56th Parliament of the United Kingdom.
electionresults.parliament.uk
August 22, 2025 at 10:05 AM
Reposted by Carl Baker
fantasticlife.bsky.social
New bot alert: if you’re the kind of person that likes @commonslibrary.bsky.social, you may also wish to spend a follow on @post-parliament.bsky.social. All the latest research from the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology
August 21, 2025 at 2:41 PM
Reposted by Carl Baker
commonslibrary.bsky.social
Who is responsible for public services in my constituency? https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/public-services-in-my-constituency/
July 28, 2025 at 1:50 PM
carlbaker.bsky.social
Huh. Just discovered that a photo of mine (of the University of Michigan) is used on 6 English Wikipedia pages and a dozen in other languages. I forgot I ever uploaded it.
July 26, 2025 at 4:06 PM
Reposted by Carl Baker
cassierbarton.bsky.social
I first did the constituency analysis quite a few years ago, but it's been good to bring it up to date. Some interesting patterns.
How do leasehold transactions vary by constituency? An annotated map of the percentage of sales that were leasehold by constituency in 2024 in England and Wales. Annotations explain: 23% of residential property sales were leasehold in England and Wales in 2024. 98% of flats were sold leasehold, compared with only 6% of houses. There was also a lot of variation between constituencies. There were some leasehold 'hotspots' in areas where it's more common for houses to be sold leasehold, including parts of the North West and Yorkshire. Other hotspots are areas where flats make up a large proportion of overall sales, like central London.
July 25, 2025 at 1:51 PM
Reposted by Carl Baker
cassierbarton.bsky.social
I've published a new briefing bringing together the stats on leasehold housing in England (and a bit in Wales). Featuring:
- MHCLG data on leasehold stock
- Trends in transactions over time and for constituencies
- Experiences of leaseholders

commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-bri...
Leasehold housing in England: Statistics
This briefing explores statistics on leasehold housing stock and transactions, in the context of ongoing reforms to the leasehold system.
commonslibrary.parliament.uk
July 25, 2025 at 1:48 PM
Reposted by Carl Baker
sarahoconnorft.ft.com
I've now written a piece about why the internet hates my apostrophe, which you can read here: www.ft.com/content/48d4... Huge thanks to everyone who replied to me about it!
July 22, 2025 at 6:07 AM
carlbaker.bsky.social
Very off-topic - but worth noting that this kind of granular local authority data is not long for this world, with county/district areas set to merge up into larger unitaries. North Yorkshire/Cumbria LAs likely to be more typical of the future size.

Has an impact on our local understanding.
sundersays.bsky.social Sunder Katwala (sundersays) @sundersays.bsky.social · Jul 15
The Independent report includes some data, including how perceptions of local cohesion vary
www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crim...
July 15, 2025 at 3:00 PM
Reposted by Carl Baker
khoavuumn.bsky.social
Using time series graphs to make causal claims be like
July 14, 2025 at 12:12 PM
Reposted by Carl Baker
hetanshah.bsky.social
I don’t get much engagement on my posts about stats but I’ll press on as I think its important. So it seems that we are about to have a lot of leadership churn with Robert Chote stepping down early as chair of the Stats Authority whilst they also appoint other key roles 😬
www.gov.uk/government/n...
Today we launch an internal expression of interest for this new Permanent Secretary role. It closes on 21 July. This will be open to existing Directors General and Permanent Secretaries. This vital role will be responsible for leading the ONS' operational business and restoring much needed trust and confidence in the department. In parallel we have also begun the process to find the next National Statistician and will shortly appoint a search partner to support us on this critical appointment leading our national government statistical service. Last month Sir Robert Chote informed the Cabinet Office of his intention to step down as UKSA Chair in the autumn to take up the role of President of Trinity College, Oxford. A campaign to appoint his successor will be launched within the next few weeks.
July 8, 2025 at 4:44 PM
Reposted by Carl Baker
houseofcommons.parliament.uk
Looking for information about your constituency?

The Commons Library can help. Get the facts on key data for your local area, including population, house prices and broadband speeds.

🔎 Explore now: commonslibrary.parliament.uk/constituency...
Graphic of a search engine promoting House of Commons Library research. Text reads: Where can I find data statistics about my local area? There’s a Library briefing for that. Get the facts at commonslibrary.parliament.uk
July 8, 2025 at 1:59 PM
Reposted by Carl Baker
samfr.bsky.social
More than a quarter of people think MPs expenses are one of the top three costs for government. A higher % than think the same for pensions or education.
July 7, 2025 at 8:10 AM
Reposted by Carl Baker
jim.londoncentric.media
One of the strangest death rattles of corporate local newspapers has been the teams of “local journalists” employed to churn stories about Martin Lewis.

So I gave Martin a ring to discuss the state of British news, plus where to buy chicken wings in London. www.londoncentric.media/p/martin-lew...
"A swamp of muck and crap": Martin Lewis on how journalism is broken
Plus: Is London getting new Bakerloo line trains after all and the property billionaire's £3m scaffolding bill.
www.londoncentric.media
July 5, 2025 at 7:15 AM
carlbaker.bsky.social
Others may (like me) have missed that there is now a consultation underway on new local authority boundaries in Surrey. www.gov.uk/government/c...
Proposals for local government reorganisation in Surrey
www.gov.uk
July 4, 2025 at 6:33 PM
Reposted by Carl Baker
owenwntr.bsky.social
From the England and Wales census, largest ethnic group by country of birth:
July 4, 2025 at 11:48 AM
carlbaker.bsky.social
Ofcom's Technology Tracker 2025 survey suggests that 78% of those aged 65+ said there was a smartphone in their home that they personally use. Those suggesting we are "near 100%" are exaggerating.
July 1, 2025 at 3:41 PM
Reposted by Carl Baker
sarahoconnorft.ft.com
The loud drumbeat that companies should "embrace AI now or be left behind" has more in common with high-pressure sales techniques than biz strategy. And that's fine - tech firms have something to sell. But the rest of us needn’t confuse it with anything more profound. www.ft.com/content/4688...
July 1, 2025 at 11:15 AM
Reposted by Carl Baker
fantasticlife.bsky.social
It's far too hot to leave your sofa. Why not empty a sack of ice into your nan's Radol Footspa and treat yourself to ten minutes with more weeknotes from @anyaso.bsky.social and I
ukparliament.github.io/ontologies/m...
2025 - Week 25
Work in progress to design data models for UK Parliament
ukparliament.github.io
June 30, 2025 at 4:24 PM
Reposted by Carl Baker
statisticalphil.bsky.social
Well, this is exciting - I've been grumbling for *years* about how figures at Budgets and Spending Reviews are only given to the nearest £100 million, which makes data analysis needlessly difficult. And the Treasury have just gone ahead and published the unrounded data! www.gov.uk/government/p...
Supporting documents for Spending Review 2025
Supporting documents alongside the main Spending Review 2025 document: distributional analysis, policy costings and data sources.
www.gov.uk
June 27, 2025 at 10:57 AM