An Accessibility-Proximity analysis attempts to capture whether a neighbourhood is under or over-provided with services. One of the core principles of sustainable transport is that people's needs should be near where they live. Nearby services reduce travel distances and reduce energy consumption and emissions. They also make it more likely that people can use healthy and sustainable modes of travel like walking and cycling. Short travel distances also save people time and money.

Ideally, everything you need would be nearby, but that is not always practical. Especially as the number of services we need varies. For example, we have far more hairdressers than speech therapists because many people regularly go to the hairdressers, and very few people need a speech therapist. So, we look at the ratio between the number of people and the number of services. For example, if there are 1,500 people within a 15-minute walk of your home, that could support around two hairdressers. But if only one hairdresser were within that distance, we would consider your neighbourhood underserved.

We can do this calculation for all kinds of services and produce a score between -3 and +3, where 0 means your neighbourhood has services in about the same proportion as the national average. A positive score means you have more of that kind of service than average, and a negative score means you have less than average. The chart and table below summarise the scores for 385 types of service listed in the Ordnance Survey Points of IntrestOrdnance Survey Points of Intrest

The scale shows how to interpret the Access and Proximity scores

We look at different time and distance bands because some services are common (like hairdressers) while others are rare (like speech therapists). We measure travel time by walking and/or public transport for 15, 30, 45, and 60 minutes (Accessibility) and straight line distance (Proximity) for 0.75, 1.5, 2.25, and 3 miles. For example, you may have no plasterers within 0.75 miles of your home, but plenty of plasterers within 1.5 miles of your home, and that is probably fine. But if your nearest postbox were 1.5 miles away, you would probably consider that too far.

The chart and table below present the same information in two different formats. This will help you explore how service provision varies from place to place.