Developing a measure of Hyper-local Need: neighbourhood level data to inform Labour’s key missions

The Independent Commission on Neighbourhoods (ICON) was created in September to examine the role of neighbourhoods in people’s lives, and to build the case for neighbourhood-focused regeneration. To support this work, OCSI was enlisted to develop a measure of Hyper-local Need, which can be used to review the current state of neighbourhoods through the lens of the Labour party’s five mission objectives.

Our work to create the measure for ICON (which is funded by Local Trust) follows our previous community-focused research projects – including work to define and locate ‘Left-behind neighbourhoods’, and an exploration of the impact of neighbourhood-based initiatives (NBIs) on community life. 

The ‘Hyper-local Need measure’ has been created to help demonstrate the ways in which complex social and economic challenges cluster in communities around the country – and aims to help answer a key question for the Commission: “what do we know about how different socio-economic needs cluster and interact at the neighbourhood level?”. 

We have summarised the measure below, and you can find the full Technical Methodology Paper at this link.

What is the Hyper-local Need measure?

The Hyper-local Need measure is designed to provide a quantitative means of assessing the socio-economic challenges presented within the new government’s five missions objectives at a small area level.

In order to develop this measure, each mission has been interpreted as a ‘dimension’ – a composite dataset which is made up of relevant indicators. Each of these dimensions can be explored individually and have then also been combined to create an overall measure of Hyper-local Need.

The dimensions are as follows:

How we developed the Hyper-local Need measure

Data selection

To ensure the Hyper-local Need measure effectively captures socio-economic inequalities, an evidence review was completed for each of the five dimensions, exploring the available data relevant to each theme. 

Each indicator was chosen based on its performance within several key criteria, which were:

• national coverage – indicators are collected consistently at a national level, ensuring comparability across regions
• granularity – data is available at small-area levels, allowing for meaningful neighbourhood-level comparisons
• timeliness – the measure uses the most up-to-date data available to ensure relevance to current policy challenges
• compliance – all indicators are non-disclosive and adhere to data protection regulations, including GDPR
• policy relevance – indicators align with the five Labour missions, ensuring they reflect key government priorities
• statistical robustness – only indicators with sufficient reliability were included, ensuring the measure can be used confidently in resource allocation and decision-making

Spatial analysis and weighting

To provide granular insights, the measure was constructed at the Lower-Layer Super Output Area (LSOA) level, ensuring small-area precision. This is because LSOAs allow for:

• consistent, long-term analysis
• comparability across areas
• identification of deprivation hotspots in both urban and rural areas

While all indicators were equally weighted within their respective dimensions, different weightings were applied across the five dimensions, reflecting Labour’s policy priorities (see the technical report for more details of the weights applied).

Key findings

The measure identified notable regional differences in the overall levels of hyper-local need across Local Authorities in England, with the highest hyper-local need largely concentrated in the North of England (around cities such as Manchester, Liverpool, Sunderland and Newcastle).

Other high-need areas were found to be concentrated in:

• post-industrial cities and towns in the Midlands, such as Birmingham
• coastal communities around Blackpool, coastal Lincolnshire, Kent and Essex

These areas are characterised by challenges such as economic stagnation, energy inefficiency, high crime rates, educational barriers and critical health disparities.

By structuring the findings within the five mission areas, the measure offers a clear evidence base for targeted interventions and policy responses across these neighbourhoods with the highest levels of hyper-local need.

Explore the Hyper-local Need measure

The full dataset is available from the ICON website.

Should you be interested in exploring the data yourself, we’ve enabled exploration of the data within our Local Insight Public Site. 

If you’re curious about exploring the data for the areas you work with – no matter the size – get in touch with us to book a demo of the Local Insight platform.

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