Insights
Recently we gave a guest presentation Understanding local economic growth on the ONS Local webinar series. The session covered GVA, productivity, and employment data, and showed a few examples of how data can help to narrow down the choice of policy interventions.
The questions asked during that session highlighted a concern that I’ve had for a while: There is a considerable gap between the evidence ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ at local government.
During our session, a few local authority (LA) analysts raised concerns about robustness of the annual population survey, while other officers were grappling with simpler problems of how to interpret data and which places would provide suitable comparisons.
Effective use of evidence is a mixed picture across local authorities
This concern also came up in our recent review of existing economic strategies mentioned in my blog Getting ready for local growth plans. We found a wide range in the quality (and quantity!) of the evidence base, and in making the connection between the evidence base and policy priorities.
Local authority economic development teams have a long list of things they need to do — develop strategies, deliver business support, work with partners, promote the area for inward investment, work internally with colleagues on planning and regeneration, and more. Many LAs have smaller teams, so it’s the same people juggling all those responsibilities. Regular use of data and research may get pushed down the to-do list.
Our resources support better use of evidence, but improving use of evidence is difficult with limited capacity
We’ve developed a number of resources to address this – our training provides brief introductions to use of evidence, use of data, and using logic models. Our webinars provide bite-sized overviews of the evidence on policy topics. And our maturity matrix provides structure for discussing the use of evidence within a team and pushing it back up the to-do list. But teams still need the capacity to attend our training or watch a webinar—those who need it most may not have the time to participate. And a maturity matrix is difficult if all the ‘next steps’ fall on one person.
There are more fundamental issues to address issues around capacity and capability, as publications from CEDOS, the Local Government Association, and Centre for Cities have all laid out.
We’ll continue supporting teams with analytical and evaluation capacity and encourage them to include impact evaluation as part of their policymaking process. And we’ll continue to offer training and resources for those who most need support.
