May 9, 2023
In this episode of Statistically Speaking we shine the spotlight on local data and look at how good statistics for small areas make for better targeted policy interventions, and more effective use of valuable public resources.
Transcript
MILES FLETCHER
Welcome again to Statistically Speaking, the Office for National Statistics podcast. I'm Miles Fletcher and in this episode we're talking about local data for local people - How good statistics for small areas make for better targeted policy interventions, and more effective use of valuable public resources.
We're going to explore, for example, how new data sources are helping to precisely calibrate economic circumstances and local communities. How we may even be able to calculate the GDP of your street or village. Now many economic forces are of course global. Some of the solutions to issues like competitiveness, productivity and inequality might begin on our doorsteps.
As ever, we have the cream of ONS expertise here on hand, this time in the shape of Emma Hickman, Deputy Director of the ONS sub national stats division, and Libby Richards, Deputy Director for UK wide coherence and head of an important new initiative called ONS Local, which we'll be hearing about in full. Also joining us is Stephen Jones, Director of Core Cities UK. Its aim is to promote the role of our great cities in creating a stronger fairer economy and society.
So Emma, to set the scene for us first
then please explain precisely if you would, the value of
really
good local
stats.
EMMA
HICKMAN
So
the needs are
multiple, really. I think the most important
thing is that
we are seeing a huge increase in locally targeted policymaking
and that’s at a range of different levels
across
government.
So in central
government, we see near the department for levelling up Housing and
Communities kind of really
wanting to think
about how
do they target policies that are going to help
to level up the country but equally what we're also seeing is an increase in
devolution which is giving more power to local areas and local
policymakers. And
so it's really
also important that they have the
statistics and the data that they need and the evidence that they
need to make really, really
good decisions for their local areas.
And they can do that in a really
powerful way
because they also have knowledge of their local areas. And then
finally, you know, actually
for citizen
kind of uses of our data and statistics really one of the inclusive
data principles that people are
able to see
themselves in the data and that they feel that the data and the
statistics that we're producing as an office represent
them. And so having statistics and data available at really
geographies that are very meaningful to people is hugely helpful in
making sure that as a country, right across the UK that we are
kind of reflective of the experiences of really kind of a wide
range of people and you know, local economies and end users and
understand kind of how they're experiencing that as
well.
MF
I guess one
of the fundamental principles here is that it's it's
local
knowledge. It's all very well and everybody
thinks they know that local area, but to understand all local
areas, we need comparable statistics and data produced to
consistent standards.
EH
Yes,
absolutely. And that's, I mean, that's one of the key challenges. I
think we'll probably kind
of come to talk
about a little bit later, but you know, absolutely. And
that's
really
about understanding you know, where
are the where are the inequalities within regions, as well as
between regions? I think we have a lot of information available
about, you know, kind of regions, but actually, we also know that
some of the inequalities that people really feel are
much greater
actually within regions and between them and kind of being able to
draw that out of data and statistics in a comparable way I think is
really important for helping sort of policymakers and decision
makers to understand where best to target
resources.
MF
Stephen, from a policy
perspective, describe the demand for local
data at
the moment,
what sorts of policy solutions are policy makers
coming up
with and how
are those best informed by really
good data?
STEPHEN
JONES
I think
it covers all
branches really of policymaking. I think as Emma was saying, the
kind of need for really understanding and having a kind of
quantitative basis for what's happening in a place is, is actually
absolutely crucial for designing policy, whether that's policy
about trying to make the economy grow, whether that's policies
aimed at trying to reduce disadvantage and challenge facing
individuals, whether that's policy about delivering the most
effective and efficient public services in the right places at the
right times, all of those things, whether that's done in public or
private sector need to be built on a good evidence
base,
good understanding.
I think the other thing I would add to the richness of local data
can do you can kind of contextualise
and understand, you
know, a number on its own doesn't mean a huge amount, but if you
know that you are 10% higher or 20% lower than your neighbouring
place. Or the city of the same size. It's those kinds of contextual
dimensions that really help nuance and finesse your
policymaking.
MF
And it does
come back to that question of trust in data than
to make those comparisons in a really
reliable and
meaningful way. Which I guess is where the ONS, the Office for National
Statistics, where we come in. Now
Libby
tell us
about ONS Local. This is an initiative
which is all about making sure that that really
high quality data is available for the policy
makers
LIBBY
RICHARDS
ONS
Local is our
advisory service that is staffed by ONS analysts who are based in
every nation of the UK and every region of England. And the idea is
that we are here to help local policy makers, regional
observatories, and lots and lots of different users of sub national
data to really understand the enormous offer from
ONS
in terms of local
data. Having said that, it's also very much about those
working relationships as well.
Stephen’s
talked a lot about
context and understanding the nuances and so understanding the
situations and challenges that are happening locally is
absolutely
key to
ONS
Local helping
local areas understand that context
better.
MF
The
big ONS surveys of course have long
carried, many
of them are typically think about the Labour Force Survey
over a very
long period
of time,
carried
a great
wealth and local data that obviously gets lost in the national headlines that
these data releases generate. But is it a question of getting
better value out of what the ONS is already creating or
actually
about sourcing new data from
different
sources?
LR
It's
a bit of
both,
very
much,
in being able to
take people through what we already have when understanding their
questions, particularly when multiple local areas are asking the
same question that's really maximising what
ONS
already do. However,
Emma's side of the house
in particular, less so in the regionally and
nationally distributed ONS Local is really
about developing those new statistics
getting into how
do we get down to hyper localised sort of
400 to 1200 household building block data that then allow people to
build those areas that means something to
them. Emma, I don't know if you want to chip
in?
EH
Yeah, very happy to.
There's
two strands I think
to that Miles. I think
there's
one which is about,
you know, how do we make the most of survey data and
kind of new
administrative data
sources together to enable that level of granularity? And then the
second part is actually
when we talk
about administrative data probably, that
might not really
mean things to lots of people. That's data that is collected for a
different purpose, but collected on a on a very, very routine
basis. And there are actually
a fair number
of new sources of that kind of data that we're able to get into the
ONS.
MF
That's
interesting. Can you
give us an example of that?
EH
So, I say relatively
new. I mean,
I think ONS
have had this
data for quite some time now. But in order to get the level of
granularity that we need on Gross Value Added statistics, for example,
which is a measure of productivity, we use HMRC’s VAT data for businesses and then
we can link that to kind of our survey data and think about how can
we then apportion estimates down to the level of geography that we
need, knowing that the survey is the place where we've been able to
ask the question that we really want to know the answer to and then
we can use the other data to model sort of some
of the other granularity that we need. The other thing is
we've
been
really
successful and using card payments data
throughout the pandemic to inform the government's response.
And we've recently successfully
acquired
a
really exciting new data source from
Visa, it's aggregated, so
there's
absolutely no way
of identifying people in the data, but
they've
aggregated it at
a really
granular level of geography for us. So
again, it would be in the region of probably hundreds
of households,
but actually
that's
granular enough for
us to get some really, really
good insights
into kind of how you know, consumer spending is kind of playing
out in the local
economy. And there are all sorts of applications for that,
that we're really
excited to be
to be able to start taking forwards now that we've got that data in the
office.
MF
So
just with those
three very
important data sources, suddenly
we're
creating right down
to that very micro level, as you say, 400 to 1200 households
really
quite a full
picture of local economic activity.
EH
And
the
really
exciting thing about that is that people
can then build their own geographies as well from that. So you
know, traditionally in statistics, we tend to produce data at the
level of an authoritative boundary like a local authority, but
actually you might really want to know about, I don't know, West
Midlands Metro, for example, they extended the line a few years
ago, you might really want to know about local economic activity
around that and actually, that's not going to be captured in the
sort of administrative boundaries and so having the data at that
level of granularity really allows people to build a geography that
sort
of area of
interest or importance to them in some way.
MF
Creating a GDP of your street or
village.
EH
Indeed.
MF
Okay,
that's
the project for now,
but it comes across with some pretty
significant challenges. It comes back to
this problem of comparability doesn't it, and particularly if
you're
looking across the
UK contexts there. We've got different government
structures, we've got some devolved areas,
we've
got areas and
we've
got big metropolitan
authorities as well. How difficult is it to be able to standardise
and to make uniform the data right across that rather complex
government
picture?
EH
Incredibly so. To the point where we
don't
necessarily aim for
uniformity. It's very much about how
do we make sure that we're able to tell stories that are
coherent and consider that UK wide angle when thinking about the
nations but also thinking about how
do you enable that comparability
that's
very tricky. And
the more and
more devolution
happens,
the more and
more difficult that
actually
can become,
particularly when you're looking, for example, at health
data where it is a devolved policy area across the four
nations. But
actually, if you live on the border,
let's
say between Wales
and England,
actually, you may well be getting your health
care on the opposite side of the border from which you live and
therefore you've got to be able to have an
opportunity to consider that.
MF
There's the
issue then of course of samples as well. And the more local you
go, of
course the
less representative your sample is going to
be.
EH
Absolutely.
And that gets particularly tricky. Even at a nation level
where we're thinking about Scotland,
Wales
or Northern Ireland,
for example, the opinions and lifestyle survey,
actually, it's
quite difficult to
find out what that looks like for Northern Ireland. And
ideally, we'd want to be able to get more
granular than the nation level, but sample sizes make that
really
tricky to
still be representative. And
so either we'd need to expand the survey to get
that level of
granularity or we have
to actually
say the best
we can do is this.
MF
Yes, because
there is only one holy universal survey of course and that is the census and that
only happens once every 10 years. I recall when we were running the
big COVID infection survey at the height of the pandemic, even a
massive data gathering operation like that. We could still
only
end up getting it
down to sub regional level which is what units are for half a
million people. So it does show doesn't it how important it is to
make the most of that admin data which can be extremely
comprehensive sometimes
EH
I, you know, completely agree with
you there Miles on administrative data and
how important it is to be able to kind of think about innovative
ways to combine that data with our survey data to get a more
granular level of information. I talked a bit earlier about kind of
estimates of gross value added and I can say that's just that's a measure of productivity and it
feeds into the largest component of GDP and in local areas. What
we were able to do there as I mentioned kind of earlier, we took
HMRC’s
VAT tax data which
is collected for all businesses that pay VAT, we were able to link
that to a data set that ONS hold called the
interdepartmental business register and the information that's held
on that is all of the information about business structure, so has
a VAT reference in there so we can link it to HMRC data. But the
most important information
on there for us
was actually
that where
the local units are, so for example, Tescos
will have a
headquarters
somewhere but
you probably
have a Tesco
Express quite close to where you live. And that's one of the local units so tells
us where the local units
are and their
postcodes and it also tells us how many employees work in those
local units. And so we can make an assumption like productivity for
all employees in the organisation is the same, and then we can look at actually
what the productivity for that firm is top level and then divide
that by the number of employees to kind of say, well, actually, if
all employees are equally productive, this local unit has a
productivity sort of measure of this much, and then we can aggregate that
back up again to the sort of area so you know, really kind of key
to be able to understand those methods, but there are some other
challenges as well, but I can probably come back to
those.
MF
That's
fascinating stuff. I mean, you could point to a certain,
perhaps a
certain enterprise,
a certain employer, that is
considered to be, you know, fundamental to a
local economy. But this way, you can actually
really press
precisely quantify what that importance
is.
EH
And I
think that's one of the challenges
because actually
as
a as an office,
we don't want to be disclosing the productivity of any single
firm or any single business because that is personal
information.
So one of the
things that we've had to do in very local areas
where there are what we call dominant businesses or dominant
organisations who have like most of the productivity for that
area,
is
we've
actually, you know, I'm gonna
be honest,
we've we've
sort of
masked it a
bit. And
so we've kind of averaged
a few local areas
together so that you still have a building block level of data, you
still have a building block so you can build a bigger area, but
you don't actually
have any
businesses that are considered dominant within the statistics that
we produce. That's taken quite a complex algorithm
to be able to achieve that. I won't go into too many details just to
say that it is a consideration and the challenge that
we've
had to really
innovate to be able to be able to publish that
information.
MF
It's
important to stress Isn't it that all the usual principles
of non-identification and
confidentiality apply in this work as much as
they do anywhere else across the ONS.
EH
Yeah,
absolutely.
MF
Give me a
couple of examples of some specific bits of work that
you've
been doing
then. There's been an analysis of towns and
out of town locations particularly and how local employment growth
is happening outside of town and city
centres.
EH
My team kind
of over the last sort of couple of years have been doing a whole
series of analysis of towns
in
particular, like I say, that's a geography that people can
really relate to, you know, lots of people kind of live in a town or a city. And
that's
something
that's
a bit more
understandable than maybe a local authority and is a bit
closer to them than the region for example. Our recent analysis on towns and
out of town locations when we looked at employment growth, I think
has some quite important findings actually
for transport
planning. For example, what we found is that actually
employment growth is not happening the most
in town centres, it's happening more and faster within
two kilometres of the edges of a town of the town boundaries.
And
so what we
think it might be happening is that kind of employment growth
is actually
happening in
industrial parks are situated on that cusp between town and kind of
rural areas. And when you're thinking about, you know, how
people might travel to work, for example, I think
it's
really,
really
important to
have those insights so that we're not just planning transport
routes, for example, that go into town
centres
MF
And what other insights have we been generating?
EH
So another
recent piece was a new piece of analysis on the nighttime
economy.
So I think
lots of people will think about the nighttime
economy as
being predominantly about
bars and restaurants
and obviously, you know, they will have a really, really
big impact
on
those sort of industries during the pandemic. But in
fact, what we find is that actually
the nighttime
economy in rural
areas
are surprisingly busy and
that's
because we also have
a nighttime
economy that is
around health and health care. Nurses, for example, kind of
working night shifts and that sort of thing. And then the other
kind of aspect to it is sort of warehousing and transport as well.
There's often kind of an overnight element to that, too.
And again, having that understanding of like how that kind of plays
out in different parts
of the country is
kind of a really, really
useful.
We originally
did it just for London, interestingly, and then we've done this kind of new analysis
looking at the whole country, which was really
interesting.
Other things produced quite recently as well are an expansion of
job quality indicators of work across the UK, which is important
because if you just look at kind of employment numbers, you're not
really getting a sense of, you know, you get a sense of who's
employed and who's unemployed in terms of characteristics of
people, but what you don't get is like how good is the job quality
for those people and actually, job quality is probably quite
important for a lot of individuals and in terms of how
good
they feel about kind
of going into work and how productive they are? And all of
those those
kinds of
things,
MF
That also forms the understanding
doesn't
it of
why some people have
opted out of employment in recent years.
EH
Absolutely.
And it also can tell us about things like how many people are
working part time who want to be working full time for
example. Or vice versa, you know, so there's kind of like a measure of underemployment in
there. It tells us a little bit about what percentage of people are
working on zero hours contracts versus permanent contracts,
all those
kinds of things, I think are
quite, you
know, sort of
quite important.
MF
Some other
developments well worth pulling out as well. I think
we've
been able to
produce very
interesting picture of comparative housing
affordability down to quite local level.
EH
Yes, I think
our main housing affordability release goes down to local authority
level, but we have produced actually a range of housing
affordability statistics, the local authority, one that we
published recently probably been the most comprehensive, we're also
doing a lot of work on the housing data that's collected through
the census as well to understand dwellings and their
characteristics as well. You know, how many dwellings are occupied
and versus non occupied and how that varies by different parts
of the country as
well. Housing affordability
in
particular tells us about how people's earnings
relate to what they spend on housing, and obviously that has
huge impact
on again, kind of,
you know, people's disposable income at the end of the day.
So I
think it's certainly an important
one.
MF
So lots of
fresh insights that are coming from the ONS and local statistics,
but it's important to point out that a
lot of this you could be doing for yourself if you're so inclined, and
we've
brought forward a
tool called and it's much more exciting than the
name implies,
actually. It's called the Sub National Indicator Explorer tool. Libby,
can you explain how that operates? And some of the
really
interesting insights that you can generate
with it.
LR
So the
Sub National Indicators Explorer is something
that we know and have known for a while that users desperately want. So
often, if you are trying to understand a particular place,
you have
to go to lots
of different
sources to actually
find information about one
area.
So for
example, if you want health you have to go to one place. If you
want to find out about education, you have
to go to
another and find your area and then collate that yourself. What the
sub national indicators Explorer allows you to do is bring together
all of those relevant indicators into one place so you can find
your local authority and compare it with say up to three others
across more than 40 different metrics ranging from gross median
pay, right the way through to healthy life expectancy, and so you
have this incredibly useful tool where you go, I want to know
everything about place x and you get it all in one place. Our
intention is to develop that a little bit further and eventually
head into some of the developments that have come out recently
around the census where you can build your own maps, build your
own areas and flexibly bring different
data things together. Alongside that we've also been thinking about
how else we might be able to compare other areas and the team have
recently done an analysis that clusters local areas together under
metrics similar to and including some of the same from the sub
national indicators tool and so that explores places that are
statistically similar using things like regional growth metrics,
and we can see what different parts of the country could
potentially learn more from each other. They might be facing
similar challenges and therefore getting beyond their local area
to kind of
join up with
other areas across the country and this also gives some
really
weird potentially interesting
insights.
MF
Yes, which
shows that despite the north south divide, about which we continue
to hear a great deal some places in North and South have a great
deal in common with each other.
LR
Indeed,
and actually
places for
example, in the south may be very
different.
So
Portsmouth
down
on the south coast
can look a lot more like places in the Northeast than
possibly
other areas on the south coast. Portsmouth is
in a cluster of higher connectivity but lower health and
well being whereas neighbouring Havant is in a much higher health
and wellbeing and moderate educational performance
cluster and
you can see this all over the place.
So for
example, Newcastle upon Tyne is actually very similar to the New Forest and
Havant
and in fact, so is
York and Great Yarmouth. And
so they're actually disperate
across the country, but mostly
situated in particular
areas.
However, if Havant or the New Forest is facing a
particular problem, maybe going and having a chat with York
might actually
be quite
helpful depending on the problem.
MF
That seems
an excellent
moment to bring in Stephen Jones as director of Core Cities. Stephen,
the local picture,
of course, is much more complex than that old cliche about the
north south divide. But what work are you doing with the
ONS and with others, to produce a
really informed picture which policymakers can
then act on to deal with these issues of localised deprivation,
economic disadvantage and so forth.
SJ
Firstly,
we're doing a piece of work as Core Cities with the Royal Society of Arts
called Urban Futures Commission, looking at the kind of like what's
the long term potential and trajectory of our biggest cities in the
UK and within that, you know, this is the sort of position of
why do
UK cities relatively
underperform compared to the international peers in the developed
world is quite a
well established problem that's decades
old.
What some of
the new data available is allowing us to kind of really get a
better handle on is, why is that the case what is
happening to for example, a fairly recent new release of fixed
capital formation, so investment
data,
at a local authority
level split by the different asset classes that the ONS have
produced is really helpful to bring an understanding and a kind of
richness to basically what both public and private investment we
can see that our big cities outside of London have a relatively
lower levels of public and private investment, particularly then if
you strip out real estate investment.
So investment
in capital and business intangibles, those things are particularly
low. So not all
of our core
cities, the total investment in Greater Manchester most recently
was about 9000 pounds per head, central London, it's 55,000 pounds per
head. If you
go down
to
Newcastle I
think it's down to 3000 pounds per head.
You know, that's a dramatic difference in levels
of public and private investment.
MF
Does having
much more reliable local data, perhaps hold with it the promise that the
policy interventions that result from it can be therefore much more
effective?
SJ
So
completely. You know, one of the things that
I'm quite excited about in terms of using the local GVA data that
Emma was talking about as a new release is there's been a whole
host of different policy interventions over the last
10,
20,
30 years trying
to kind of
create economic activity within zones areas and whatever was saying
about the ability to build your own geographies, I think is really
has real potential in it. So whether it's the enterprise zones of
the Heseltine era or the enterprise zones of the George Osborne
era, whether it's free ports policy more recently,
whether it's transport led regeneration schemes around new road
junctions or new rail stations, whether it's the role of
universities, science parks, investment in innovation zones,
the government recently announced in the budget just a few weeks
ago, the question of investment zones, all of these policies, they
are some of the national ones – there's many more when you think locally
are attempting to try and create concentrated economic activity
within certain locations. One of the main criticisms in a policy
sense is that that activity will just get displaced from elsewhere.
If the business that is currently located three miles up the road will
move to within the zonal boundary to gain sort of benefits and
advantages that are being offered there. Well, we'll kind of be
able to tell whether that's true or not, by actually looking to see
whether the areas nearby have sort of reducing GVA compared to the
areas that are growing and I think being able to properly evaluate
policy interventions over the last 30 years to really then decide,
well, is it worth pursuing policies like the investment zone
announcement of recent weeks or actually should we be trying other
approaches? I
think that that kind of insight is going to be incredibly
valuable.
MF
Indeed, and perhaps also with data at a much
lower level and much more micro local level as well,
perhaps much
smaller, more
precisely targeted interventions might be what's called
for.
SJ
Exactly and I
think that again, picking up some of what Emma was saying earlier,
some of this data is a tool for local authorities. This has
huge
potential sort of exactly
where are the
jobs located? Are they in the town centre?
Are they in the business park on the edge of town? What time of day
is that activity happening? Is it shift patterns versus is it
concentrated in the sort of 945 when we know these things, whether
you're sitting there working out your local plan and working out
where you're going to zone, your new employment land where you're
working out whether you're going to offer any business rate
incentives in a business improvement district when you're sitting
there working out and what time of day do you need to have your
trading standards officers available, these kinds of planning
decisions day to day when you're trying to think about what your
refuse collection plans and patterns are those things that local
authorities are doing on just managing public services bringing
together those different aspects having that sort of insight to
know what's happening, when and what's most effective, we'll just
make our policies more efficient. And in a world where public
finances are constrained, particularly so for local authorities and
have been for a while or be able to use the funding that is
available more efficiently and the delivery of those services I
think is hugely beneficial. The other thing that
I'm
interested in I
think, is an area where we as Core Cities can can
work with the ONS
and others going forward is how do we make more advantage and take
more advantage of the data, administrative data that is held
locally?
So if you
think of an average local authority, they have huge amounts of data about that area.
Whether that's through kind of council tax
dates on collections, arrears, council tax discounts,
whether that's through business rate data,
whether that's through library card
membership, planning applications, the list
goes on. Obviously, for the same reasons,
as we've talked about the need for
protecting individuals and protecting data confidentiality, some of
that data, you know, we'll need to be careful about
how
do we use but at
the moment, it's largely sitting
there on databases
being under explored. If we can get to a world where we
can start matching some of that data with some of the data sources
that the ONS are making available, and then
matching it with data sources such as Emma was talking about that
the private sector can bring to the table like Visa and others. I
think it's in bringing
those sort of insights together. You can
actually
really,
really develop the rich pictures. I can see Libby you would like to come in, so I
might just pause there.
LR
Yeah. I was
just gonna
say
Stephen there mentioned about
utilising locally held local data alongside national level local
data, sort of your ONS data, your government department
data, and actually that is one of the things that we're really
hoping that ONS Local can help with by having
people locally with very good relationships with those individuals
in local government, local authorities, regional
observatories, actually, if we can pull
together their administrative data with what we have at the
national level and help with some of that analytical insight
because also aware, as Stephen said, local governments are
constrained and resources actually, if ONS can help in that analytical
insight, then even better that we can help along the
way.
MF
So
Emma,
an exciting vision
of the future there and the possibility to be really improving
local and regional policy interventions. What's coming next?
EH
The really
big exciting development that I just wanted to mention is the kind
of opportunity for collaboration and I think ONS as an organisation are on the
cusp of opening up the Integrated Data Service more widely, and actually,
we've been working really, really closely with that team over the
last couple of years or so to understand what a good data
asset would look like for subnational. And to kind of start to make
sure that we can do some of the data engineering to make that micro
data. So when I talk about micro data, I'm talking like response
level information from surveys kind of available in a secure and
safe way and also in a way that's easily linkable, so that you can
easily pick up something about health and something about quality
jobs and link them together in that service and do the analysis
that you were talking about. That's one of the most exciting
developments. I think that's on the horizon in terms of
how we'll be able to collaborate and kind
of use and share data more widely, keeping in mind that privacy
aspect.
So you know,
the idea is that all
of that data
is anonymized before it goes into the service and then things will
be in kind
of really
strictly
controlled through
it. But there is that opportunity for those wider collaborations.
I don't know Libby, whether you wanted
to come in a little bit on some of the other kind of future
developments as well.
LR
Yes, so over
the last 9 to
10 months we have co-designed the ONS Local service going out
across the country, doing round tables, getting people
together in
the room, putting forward our vision of what ONS Local might look
like but very much saying “tell us why we’re wrong, what doesn’t
work for you, tell us what we’re missing”. So really building that service
with our users, and now we’re really beginning to fly now that
we have people across the country. Other bits of
new work also on the
horizon include new data looking at the effect of place on
geographic mobility across towns and cities, so we can follow those
trends as people move around the country and can help us build
pictures of places, track educational outcomes and workforce trends
by area, at a level that we’ve not been able to
do in the past. We’ve also talked a lot today about
the Gross Value Added (GVA) data, and that obviously focuses on
businesses. The next innovation for those
sorts of granular statistics is more looking at the
households aspect, and therefore allowing
more targeted policymaking for those bespoke
areas, and understand those hyper-local
affects that are so important at
the moment,
particularly when considering all those devolution
aspects.
MF
Some insight there on the work underway here to ensure people across the UK see themselves in our data. Many thanks to our guests today Emma Hickman, Deputy Director of ons sub national stats division, Libby Richards, Deputy Director for ONS Local and UK wide coherence, and Stephen Jones, Director of Core Cities UK.
I'm Miles Fletcher and thank you to you for listening. If you've got a question or comment about these ONS podcasts, you can find us on Twitter @ONSfocus. You can also subscribe to new episodes of the podcast on Spotify, Apple podcasts and all other major platforms.
Many thanks to our producer for this episode at the ONS Alisha Arthur. Until next time, goodbye.
ENDS