BankOfEngland

Provider

• provider_name: Bank of England
• provider_longname: Bank of England
• provider URL: http://www.bankofengland.co.uk
• beta version of new site: https://beta.bankofengland.co.uk
• region: UK
• terms of use:
• approximate number of datasets: 64

Data accessibility

• SDMX: (If yes, links and SDMX releases implemented: No
• REST API: see https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/boeapps/database/help.asp?Back=Y&Highlight=XML#XML
• Bulk Download: (if yes, links and formats: xls, https://beta.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/statistics/bankstats-latest-tables.zip
• Alphabetical list of datasets: https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/boeapps/database/CategoryIndex.asp?Travel=NIxAZx&CategId=allcats&CategName=Combined%20A%20to%20Z
• Account: no

Desired datasets

• Description: Among all the tables available on the site, we take only Bankstats tables

Data tree

• Existence of a hierachy of datasets on web site: several

• How to recover the information: difficult to match A-Z datasets with topics or tables

  Categories:

  • Bankstats
  • A Money & Lending
  • B Monetary financial institutions' balance sheets, income & expenditure
  • C Further analyses of deposits and lending
  • D Public sector debt and money markets operations etc (including reserves)
  • E Capital issuance: bonds, equities and commercial paper
  • F Financial derivatives
  • G Interest and exchange rates etc.

Datasets

64 Excel files with multiple sheets. Each file is a dataset, each sheet is a dimension

• datasetCode: table number, cell A1

• datasetName: cell A2

• how to get release date: top of bankstats html page

• dataset docHref: no

• dataset notes: yes (bottom of the sheet)

• dimension_list:

  • u: units, cell A3
  • i: indicator, cell A5
  • sa: seasonal adustment, cell C3 (if available)

• use of attributes: ?

• attribute_list: no

• available frequencies: annual, quarterly, monthly

• availability of previous updates: yes, via API

• existence of real time datasets: no

Series

• Series key: concatenation of 3 or 4 letter prefix in column B (first non empty cell) and code in the column of the series. Some prefixes are ambiguous when two prefixes are used in the same sheet. (ex. LPM/RPM). The only solution that I can think of is to use the API to validate one combination or the other.
• Series name: concatenate the indicator label and the header lines on top of the series (duplicate cells spanning several columns in the header)
• Series docHref: no
• Series notes: yes (next to series code and bottom of the sheet)
• missing values: ?
• date format: yyyy mmm,
• mixed frequencies in the same dataset: no

Updates

• calendar of future updates: yes, https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/news
• summary of previous updates: yes, https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/news
• regular updates: no, most of the updates happen at 1:00 am or 10:30 am
• RSS flow: https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/rss/statistics
• best way to monitor updates: consult RSS every day at 1:05 am and 10:35 am (check the delay to appear on RSS)

Special problems

There is no simple way to learn series codes. Sometime testing via the API seems necessary

Other remarks