WIREDGOV

The National Indicator (NI) Set is designed to offer government and partners a common framework for assessment of conditions, and change in those conditions, across England.

The NIs relate to government’s priorities and have been developed around quantitative data which is both available and can be consistently applied at local authority level across the country.

Local Area Agreements (LAAs) cover large areas and use of indicators at this scale can mask great variation in policy needs and outcomes. Working with communities and in neighbourhoods requires intelligence at a finer spatial level.

To test out the practicalities of smaller area reporting, we've analysed the extent to which the NIs can be disaggregated to a lower than LAA level. In addition we have worked with 3 Local Strategic Partnerships (LSPs) to develop a series of case studies, each focused on a different NI or series of NIs (e.g. the place survey), showing how the partnership has focused their activity at a local level), and analysing their experience.

We have produced a set of tables demonstrating the potential for disaggregating the NIs at a spatial level which is relevant to individual communities. The availability to develop the indicators has been assessed at three spatial levels:

• local authority district – which will be important in two tier areas, where the LAA operates at the county level

• rural/urban – whether the indicator data could be matched to the official definition of urban and rural areas (using one of wards, postcodes, grid references or lower or middle super output areas)
  

• neighbourhood – whether the indicator data is available at or could be matched to wards or some similarly sized locality geography

A fully searchable version of the tables will be available on  IDeA's LAA online Knowledge forum shortly.

We've also produced a how to guide 'Locality Reporting: Spatial disaggregation of the National Indicator Set' which explains further the relevance of sub-LAA indicators and provides some commentary about the extent to which this is feasible.

Download the guide 'Locality Reporting: Spatial disaggregation of the National Indicator Set'

Download the tables

Download our leaflet 'A truly local view: locality reporting against the national indicator set'