The Independent Commission on Neighbourhoods (ICON) was established to examine the role of neighbourhoods in people’s lives and build the case for neighbourhood-focused regeneration. To support this work, ICON needed a robust evidence base that could show how complex social and economic challenges are distributed across communities and how different forms of need interact within the same places.
ICON therefore asked us to develop a quantitative measure of Hyper-local Need structured around the government’s five missions. The measure needed to provide nationally consistent and statistically robust data at a small-area level while remaining clearly connected to current policy priorities. It also needed to allow each mission to be explored separately alongside an overall measure of neighbourhood need.
We interpreted each of the government’s five missions as a separate dimension of Hyper-local Need. For each dimension, we carried out an evidence review of the available data landscape and selected indicators against a consistent set of criteria, including national coverage, small-area availability, timeliness, compliance with data protection requirements, policy relevance and statistical robustness.
The five dimensions were:
We constructed the measure at Lower-layer Super Output Area level toallow for consistent comparisons between neighbourhoods and help reveal concentrations of need in both urban and rural areas.
We combined the selected indicators to create a score for each of the five dimensions. Indicators were equally weighted within their respective dimensions, while different weightings were applied across the dimensions to reflect the relative emphasis of the government’s policy priorities. The five dimensions were then combined to create the overall Hyper-local Need measure.
Our analysis identified clear geographic patterns in Hyper-local Need. The highest levels were concentrated largely in northern England, including neighbourhoods around Manchester, Liverpool, Sunderland and Newcastle. Other concentrations were identified in post-industrial towns and cities in the Midlands and in coastal communities, including areas around Blackpool, coastal Lincolnshire, Kent and Essex.
These places experienced overlapping challenges including economic stagnation, energy inefficiency, high crime, educational barriers and health inequalities. By presenting the findings through the five mission areas, the measure helped show both the overall concentration of neighbourhood need and the specific pressures contributing to it.
We delivered the complete Hyper-local Need dataset, a Technical Methodology Paper explaining its construction and analysis showing how patterns varied across England. We also made the measure available for exploration through a Local Insight Public Site, allowing users to examine the data for individual neighbourhoods and wider areas.
Following the development of the measure, ICON commissioned us to support a separate longitudinal study examining how neighbourhood conditions had changed between 2001 and 2021. We reviewed the available data, assembled comparable indicators and converted historic data onto current Lower-layer Super Output Area boundaries to provide ICON with a consistent dataset for analysing change over time.
Highlight patterns of need that existing measures miss
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Create a consistent measure that helps you monitor trends and understand how patterns change over time
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