Our Research Services

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.

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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.

Request a quote

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

Request a quote

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.

Request a quote

Research Projects

Enabling real change in Hounslow with a measured, data-led approach

This case study will focus on OCSI’s ongoing collaboration with Hounslow Council,…
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Research Projects

Everybody needs good neighbourhoods 2: Your questions answered

Following the release of the second Everybody needs good neighbourhoods report, Stefan…
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Research project: developing a measure of hyper-local need

Research Projects

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…
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