Taking as their starting point the falling utility of government data sources for academic work, the authors seek to discuss possible alternatives. A brief overview of the problems of public data access is presented, and the current situation is outlined with examples, before a more detailed discussion is given of one particular area of growth—register information. The problems of analysing register data are discussed, and an example of a hereditament-based property register is presented in detail. This leads to a discussion of a Monte Carlo methodology as the most appropriate: the methodology is described in principle, before being applied to the exemplar data set. Last, the combination of a novel data set with this methodology is evaluated, and the ‘real-world’ question of whether Tyneside's light rail transit system, ‘Metro’, has influenced land-use change in the area is taken as an example.
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