1. What Poverty Statistics do Local Authorities Need?
Juliet Whitworth
Research and Information Manager
Date

2. Councils’ Use of Poverty Data
What data do councils use?
What do they use it for?

3. What Data Do Councils Use?
Indices of Deprivation
Child Poverty Basket of Indicators
Health data
Education data
Labour market and benefits data
Housing/homeless data
Local data
IMD is widely used by authorities. It is particularly valued because it is seen as being independent, not produced by any organisation with an axe to grind, and not a ‘Westminster fiddle’. Widespread understanding amongst councillors of what it is trying to do, and what it shows. Is available at LSOA level, which facilitates identification of small areas or communities which might otherwise be disguised. It also places areas in a national context. Updated reasonably often.
Child poverty indicators pull together a basket of data that is useful to local authorities. Unfortunately some data in it is discontinued now, and it is not kept up to date, but it’s a good starting point.
And then a series of sources of data to help authorities understand the wider causes and effects of poverty on individuals and households.
Finally, local authorities may use their own local data to understand poverty in their area (for example, households in rent arrears, households claiming Council Tax Benefit, location of carers).

4. What Do Councils Use Data For? 1
Local authorities’ role in delivering national policy locally
Understanding local areas
Providing evidence in bids for grants
Targeting resources – for example, support for unemployed
Feeding into local plans (JSNA, community strategy, community safety)
Delivering national policy locally – for example, tackling child poverty, reducing child obesity, supporting troubled families – and just generally, contributing to a thriving local area.
Understanding local areas – what are the issues locally, how do they compare to other areas, so councillors can understand them and make decisions accordingly
For example, gaining access to EU funding for particular initiatives that support national and local policies, or lottery funding.
Targeting resources: for example, providing evidence where non-universal projects – such as local workless initiatives – should be focussed
Feeding directly into local plans.

5. What Do Councils Use Data For? 2
Getting a view of impact on poverty over time
Linking to national research to identify likely local issues
Managing performance of services
Ensuring engagement across a broad spread of residents
IMD is quite useful for taking a longitudinal measure of the change in local poverty – although changes to methodology limits this. However, rather than using it to assess absolute change, it can give a feel for the broad scale of change or direction of travel – had 10 wards in worst 40, now 5.
Where data isn’t available, councils may link to national research – in some case data isn’t available at local authority level, so might use national research to identify proxies on the basis of attributes – for example, if you have an area where 40% of residents are workless, and national research shows that 50% of unemployed people smoke, it may be worth targeting ‘stop smoking’ support to that area compared to others
Authorities have been known to monitor the performance of services they have commissioned, like children’s centres, on the basis of how they are performing compared to others with a similar reach.
Used to ensure that surveys pick up a representative spread of residents, not just the articulate and well-educated.

6. What are the Issues for Councils?
Data not always available at a small area
Some useful data has been discontinued
Digital exclusion data would be good
Income data would be nice too
IMD is available at low levels, which are the most useful for authorities.
Even in areas with successful economies, there are pockets of poverty, which only show up with this level of data. For example, Cambridge is a national centre for higher education and research and development, with a hi-tech and bio-technology economy. It has high average earnings, low rates of unemployment and a large number of jobs available in the city. However, a significant proportion of Cambridge residents (11.2%) are in receipt of benefits such as Housing Benefit and Council Tax benefit, and this figure rises to more than 20% in some wards in the city. Due to a combination of high living costs and low incomes, these residents have very limited disposable income or savings. They are more likely to find themselves in crisis situations, because they do not have the financial reserves needed to weather unforeseen events, such as the washing machine breaking, and they are most likely to need crisis services like Food Banks. Authorities need to use this data to target these services.
A lot of other useful data isn’t necessarily available even at local authority level. This is true of national surveys (for example those looking at participation in sport and exercise); and increasingly government departments are reducing sample sizes in order to make savings, which make that local area data even less likely to be available.
Local government would like to encourage government departments to do fewer surveys, perhaps cross department, but those they do should be large enough to give good local data.
Some data that authorities found very useful is no longer available – fuel poverty statistics at local level, and DWP vacancies data, to give authorities the opportunities to work with local education and skills providers and ensure a good match.
With a ‘digital by default’ commitment, authorities are aware that some of their residents are excluded from easy access to some government services (including benefits claiming); and this also affects households’ ability to shop around for the cheapest prices. Knowing where these areas are allows councils to provide internet access points in suitable community buildings (for example leisure centres and community centres) to reach these groups, and provide staff or ‘Digital Champions’ to support residents to build their digital capacity, capability and connectivity.
Income data is getting more important, as poverty is as much associated with low income now as worklessness, and authorities can’t always identify those people.

7. Want Local Area Poverty Data?
LG Inform is the LGA’s data benchmarking service
see and view the welfare reform report on the carousel
Rather than sum up, here’s an advert.