HS2

The sustainability statement for the planned ‘phase two’ extension of the high speed rail link – which would go from Birmingham further north to destinations like Manchester and Leeds – contains a socio-economic appraisal which makes heavy use of deprivation statistics to claim various local development and regeneration opportunities. The[…]

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Nottingham Insight

Nottingham city council created comprehensive online area profiles through a collaborative effort with partner organisations like the local NHS and police. This includes a powerful online mapping tool which features a plethora of statistics on demographics, crime, economy and deprivation (IMD score) at ward level as well as mapping features from streetlights to youth centres and[…]

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The Skills Funding Agency

The Skills Funding Agency is a government agency that funds skills training for further education in England. This includes apprenticeships and training schemes, sixth form colleges, learning from prison and adult education. The agency supports “over 1,000 colleges, private training organisations, and employers with £3.6 billion of funding each year”[…]

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Sheffield

Here’s a great example of how local authorities can use the IMD to target programmes more efficiently: Sheffield’s ‘Activity Sheffield’ programme provides free sport and activity sessions for people around the city. The programme’s ‘core team’ focuses on the key age groups of 8 to 16 year olds and those[…]

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MoD using the IMD

According to Hansard records from October 2001 the Ministry of Defence uses the Index of Multiple Deprivation “to inform decisions such as unit moves, site rationalisations and investment decisions on new facilities” I managed to find an example of this in practice – an MoD Strategic Environmental Assessment from November[…]

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The Single Regeneration Budget

The Single Regeneration Budget (SRB) ran from 1995-2001. It pulled together different government programmes and funding streams to try and simplify funding and better support local regeneration projects. According to a 2007 assessment by the Cambridge Department of Land Economy about £26 billion was spent in total with £5.7 billion from the SRB[…]

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Pupil absence and IMD

In a study by the University of Sheffield’s Social & Spatial Inequalities Research Group, the Indices of Multiple Deprivation were used to look at pupil absence inequalities. Secondary school pupil absence is an indicator in the Education, Skills and Training Domain of the IMD, measured as “the proportion of authorised and unauthorised absences[…]

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Troubled Families

The Government’s Troubled Families programme targeted support at 120,000 families identified by central government as being in need of ‘turning around’ due to experiencing multiple issues of deprivation such as high truancy rates, lack of employment, physical and mental health problems. DCLG estimated that these families cost society about £8 billion[…]

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NHS Dentistry

The NHS uses the Index of Multiple Deprivation as part of a formula for allocating dental services, in what is perhaps a recognition of the relationship between tooth decay and deprivation (here is another post on this). Buried in the technical guide to NHS funding formulae allocations I found this:[…]

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More dog bites in deprived areas

Here’s a BBC article on NHS statistics collected by the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC) about hospital admissions for animal bites. The key finding is the headline that rates of hospital admissions for dog bites are three times higher in the most deprived 10% of areas of England[…]

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Child obesity

Public Health England analysed child poverty by deprivation by comparing the Indices of Multiple Deprivation with data from the (slightly ominous sounding) ‘National Child Measurement Programme’. They argued there was a strong, “almost linear relationship” between child obesity and the decile of deprivation for the area they live in. This finding was[…]

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The Prince’s Trust

The Prince’s Trust is one of the UK’s largest charities, and spent over £52m through its charitable activities last year according to the government charities register. It’s focused on youth unemployment and poverty, targeting unemployed 13-30 year olds and those at risk of exclusion. It supports different projects and schemes[…]

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Is the lottery a ‘tax on the poor’?

‘Public Theology’ think tank Theos assessed whether the UK lottery was ‘progressive’ or ‘regressive’ in its distribution of ‘good cause’ funding versus player characteristics. First they analysed the characteristics of lottery players, drawing on several different studies to show that lottery play was more common in lower social classes (by[…]

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