Highlighting rural deprivation in Norfolk

The Norfolk Investing in Communities (IiC) partnership was appointed by the County Strategic Partnership management group to manage the 10 year IiC programme across the County. One question to emerge from the Norfolk IiC partnership was ‘how can the Norfolk IiC partnership ensure that rural areas and communities receive their fair share of resources?’

The Norfolk County Strategic Partnership commissioned OCSI to develop innovative ways of measuring and highlighting deprivation in rural areas. The project aimed to redress the limitations of existing standard data sources for measuring rural deprivation, particularly at the small-area level. The work focused on 4 main areas:

• Uncovering pockets of deprivation: We statistically modelled key deprivation datasets such as the Index of Multiple Deprivation down to Output Area level, and validated these datasets using locally-held administrative data. Our modelling analysis uncovered many pockets of deprivation in Norfolk’s rural areas that are not identified with existing Super Output Area datasets
• The “Rural Share of Deprivation” in Norfolk: We identified that on many issues, up to 50% of all people experiencing high levels of deprivation across the County live in rural areas
• Deprivation issues in rural areas: Our analysis highlighted key barriers faced by people living in rural areas
• Profiling settlements: As part of the project we developed a comprehensive set of data profiles, providing evidence on deprivation issues at small settlement level across Norfolk

This work has provided the framework for subsequent work on profiling rural communities and settlements, as well as identifying rural deprivation issues not picked-up by datasets such as the Index of Multiple Deprivation.

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