Community Needs Index 2023 now available as open data

The English Community Needs Index (CNI) 2023 is now published as open data and publicly available to download from the UK Data Service, making it easier to access the data directly for funding applications, local analysis and independent research.

The CNI measures social and civic infrastructure, connectedness and community engagement, helping identify places where communities may lack the resources needed to respond to challenges such as high levels of deprivation. You can read more about the development of the CNI here.

This is a welcome step as the CNI continues to gain traction, including being a core measure of need across both the Pride in Place Programme and DCMS’s place-based programmes. 

We are here to help you interpret the data

While the Community Needs Index is now publicly available as open data, we will still be offering support for visualising and interpreting the data to help you understand what the data shows about your neighbourhoods:

• Our Double Disadvantage Explorer is free to access and shows how your place of interest ranks on both the CNI and IMD (a step-by-step guide to using the explorer here).
• OCSI On Demand provides instant area profile reports, to give you an overview of community need alongside wider demographic and socio-economic indicators.
• Local Insight is the easiest way to explore the CNI for bespoke neighbourhoods and is designed for organisations needing regular, in-depth access to place-based intelligence.
• For more complex questions, we offer tailored analysis and support to understand the drivers of community need in your neighbourhoods.

What’s next for the Community Needs Index?

In collaboration with the Centre for Collaboration in Community Connectedness (C4) we are developing an enhanced UK-wide Community Needs Index. This project aims to create a consistent framework across all four nations, allowing for more comparable analysis of community need across the UK.

With C4’s support, we’ll be able to go beyond open data and draw on high-quality safeguarded datasets, including ONS microdata, to strengthen the evidence base behind the Index. This multi-year collaboration also gives us the time and expertise to refine the statistical models and improve the reliability of small-area measures.

Work is well underway, with the Enhanced UK Community Needs Index due to launch on the C4 website towards the end of 2026.

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