About us
We are the national Trusted Research Environment for data linkage in longitudinal population research.
We exist to provide data services to the interdisciplinary longitudinal research community.
At UK LLC, we have established data and governance pipelines to link anonymised Longitudinal Population Study participant data to their health, administrative socio-economic, demographic and place-based data.
Data are held in a centralised research resource, independently audited and certified as a Trusted Research Environment.
We are led by the Universities of Bristol and Edinburgh and operate in collaboration with University College London, SeRP UK, Swansea University, University of Leicester and City St George’s, University of London.
We are funded by UK Research and Innovation, Medical Research Council and Economic and Social Research Council.
Our Mission
We provide a data linkage resource that combines anonymised data from more than 20 LPS partners with health, administrative socio-economic, demographic and place-based data. We offer a straightforward, single-application process for UK-based researchers.
We enable cross-sector research, addressing important issues affecting people’s health and wellbeing. Researchers can study a wider range of health conditions, help tackle health inequalities and build on our existing knowledge using linked longitudinal data.
For example, they can examine how health and mental health conditions affect care provision among different socio-demographic groups, identify factors that can be modified to reduce risks, and understand the social impact of childhood adversity on adult health inequality.
Our Service
We provide secure access to our Trusted Research Environment containing more than 325,000 participant records from Longitudinal Population Studies (LPS) across the four UK nations. This includes some of the earliest LPS established, with decades of self-reported and clinical data.
Our service enables researchers the opportunity to gain unique insights into population health and wellbeing that aims to improve health and wellbeing and service provision.
Our History
The idea for what would eventually become UK Longitudinal Linkage Collaboration (UK LLC) was something that had been talked about for over a decade across the longitudinal research community.
The community had often talked about the complexities involved in being able to link Longitudinal Population Study participants’ data so while the coronavirus pandemic resulted in this infrastructure being put in place urgently, the need for a more efficient and effective way was identified much earlier.
UK LLC originated in 2020 as part of the COVID-19 Longitudinal Health and Wellbeing National Core Study, set up by Sir Patrick Vallance and led by Professor Nish Chaturvedi.
This National Core Study was set up to support researchers to understand the health, social and economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic by uniting established Longitudinal Population Studies (LPS) and national anonymised electronic health records to inform policy.
We give huge thanks to the broad group of LPS teams, researchers, public contributors, NHS and wider government data scientists for their contribution to our design.
A Trusted Research Environment (TRE) is a highly secure computer system where researchers can access and study data. Data is available in the same way as a reading library – researchers can view the information but cannot take it out.
Our TRE is hosted by Swansea University’s Secure eResearch Platform (SeRP UK) and uses NHS Digital Health and Care Wales (DHCW) as a Trusted Third Party (TPP) for data linkage processing. Swansea University contributes to data processing, development, and academic outputs, whilst City St George’s, University of London and the University of Leicester’s Centre for Environmental Health and Sustainability provides modelled environmental exposure data and address geocoding services.
Only approved researchers from recognised institutions can apply to use the data. Access to confidential and sensitive data is legally protected. It can only be viewed by Accredited Researchers who have been approved to handle it. This approval is provided through the Office for National Statistics and is regulated by the Digital Economy Act 2017.