nisrarr
Download Data from the NISRA Data Portal
Download data from the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA) data portal, accessed at < https://data.nisra.gov.uk>. NISRA is a government agency and the principal source of official statistics and social research on Northern Ireland.
nisrarr
nisrarr is a package for accessing data from the NISRA data
portal directly from R.
Installation
Install nisrarr from CRAN with:
install.packages("nisrarr")
Alternatively, you can install the development version of nisrarr from GitHub with:
# install.packages("pak")
pak::pak("MarkPaulin/nisrarr")
Example
nisra_search() lets you search for a dataset using keywords or
variable names, and shows information like the last time the dataset was
updated:
library(nisrarr)
head(nisra_search(keyword = "claimant"))
#> # A tibble: 3 × 5
#> dataset_code dataset_label frequency dataset_dimensions updated
#> <chr> <chr> <chr> <list> <dttm>
#> 1 CCMSOA Claimant Count … Month <chr [3]> 2025-05-13 12:37:41
#> 2 CCMAA Claimant Count … Month <chr [3]> 2025-05-14 09:30:00
#> 3 CCMLGD Claimant Count … Month <chr [3]> 2025-05-14 09:30:00
nisra_read_dataset() can be used to download a dataset from the NISRA
data portal as a data-frame:
claimant_count <- nisra_read_dataset("CCMLGD")
head(claimant_count)
#> # A tibble: 6 × 4
#> Statistic Month `Local Government District` value
#> <chr> <chr> <chr> <dbl>
#> 1 Claimant Count 2005M01 Northern Ireland 29573
#> 2 Claimant Count 2005M01 Antrim and Newtownabbey 1530
#> 3 Claimant Count 2005M01 Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon 2165
#> 4 Claimant Count 2005M01 Belfast 7948
#> 5 Claimant Count 2005M01 Causeway Coast and Glens 2763
#> 6 Claimant Count 2005M01 Derry City and Strabane 4674
#> # Source: Claimant Count Monthly Data
The data portal also provides various types of metadata, which can be
accessed using get_metadata() or get_metadata_field():
get_metadata(claimant_count)
#> Label: Claimant Count Monthly Data
#> Subject: Claimant Count
#> Type: Official statistics
#> Updated: 2025-05-14T9:30:00.000Z
#> Note: The claimant count is an administrative data source derived from Jobs and Benefits Offices ...
#> Contact: Economic and Labour Market Statistics
#> Contact email: [email protected]
#> Contact phone: +44 (0)28 90529475
#> Copyright: Crown Copyright (https://www.nisra.gov.uk/crown-copyright)
get_metadata_field(claimant_count, "contact")
#> $name
#> [1] "Economic and Labour Market Statistics"
#>
#> $email
#> [1] "[email protected]"
#>
#> $phone
#> [1] "+44 (0)28 90529475"
Help wanted / things that need done
There isn’t much error handling at the moment. If you’re using this package and get an error message, please open an issue!
Inspiration
This package is heavily based on csodata, which wraps an identical API. I also learnt a lot from reading the code for nomisr.