Social Research Consultancy | Area Needs & Community Assessment

Our services

Our team are experts in neighbourhood level data. We:

Apply knowledge and understanding of knowledge about neighbourhoods
Bring together the strategic big picture as well as the local detail
Identify important issues and patterns from large datasets
Produce evidence-based, robust measure of need

Take a look at some of our standard services. If you would like to enquire about a bespoke project, please get in touch.

Area needs analysis

Identify the key issues and challenges for any area with our bespoke area needs analysis reports.

The project includes:

Agreeing a set of themes and geographic coverage: We work with you to understand and determine your priorities for the report
Curating a list of suggested indicators: Based on your objectives, we will provide a list of suggested indicators that are most relevant to you
Producing data for required areas: We can provide data for a range of area types and can suggest interesting breakdowns including; local authority, major towns, rural/urban areas, neighbourhood areas and benchmark areas
Analysis of the data: We will provide a high-level story including the areas facing the most acute challenges, which areas fare better or worse in absolute and relative terms, areas with multiple challenges, hidden pockets of need
Producing charts and data visualisations
A physical and/or digital copy of the report and all underlying data

Prices start at £8000 +VAT, with annual updates from £3000 +VAT.

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Creating new measures to identify need

Develop a composite indicator to identify need on a specific theme or challenge.

Consultation to understand the challenges you would like to measure
A review of the open data landscape to identify relevant metrics, including a justification of whether they are robust enough to include in a measure
Recommendations for a methodology to standardise, weight and combine the indicators
Production of an index for the requested area type (eg, LSOA or Ward)

Request an initial consultation

Community Needs Index analysis for your area

We have developed a Community Needs Index that looks at the social and cultural factors that can impact upon people’s outcomes. While this is a national measure, we also offer more detailed analysis for local areas.

The project includes:

A deep dive into the community needs for your areas: What are the drivers, which areas are most impacted and what is the relationship between community need and deprivation
Analysis of the underlying component indicators of the Community Needs Index: To determine whether there are particular indicators contributing to high community need
The relationship between the different dimensions of Community Need
Analysis of any left-behind neighbourhoods within your area: To understand the particular challenges they face

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Identifying benchmark areas for programme evaluation

Measure the impact of your programme through comparing data with similar benchmark areas.

Our programme evaluation support includes:

Identifying benchmark areas: We select areas that are statistically similar to your program in terms of socio-economic characteristics, population size, deprivation levels, and geographic location.
Selecting evaluation metrics: We identify metrics that are consistently available over time and at a suitable geographic level, to measure the performance of your program.
Trend analysis: We analyse the overall performance of your programme and compare it with benchmark areas. Our analysis helps you identify specific areas that performed better or worse than their benchmark areas.

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Our Research Services

Our services

Area needs analysis

Creating new measures to identify need

Community Needs Index analysis for your area

Identifying benchmark areas for programme evaluation

Everybody needs good neighbourhoods 2: Your questions answered

Our work on the first long‑term evaluation of resident‑led regeneration: Everybody needs good neighbourhoods 2

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

Uncovering Sussex: How OCSI’s research helps Sussex Community Foundation to tackle poverty