Monitoring change and narrowing the gap
The Vitality Index indicators are regularly updated to create sufficient trend data to monitor change more confidently. The aim of this research is to reflect the collective impact of regeneration activities on local neighbourhoods, by using the composite Vitality score (created from a combination of socio-economic data) to measure change.
This approach provides a useful indication of the effectiveness of partnership working, aiming to help in our understanding of the collective impact regeneration programmes have on neighbourhood renewal key outcomes.
More recently, we have produced a theme by theme analysis of change that indicates which theme contributes most towards change in overall Vitality.
The information that follows presents our research findings for two key regeneration programmes – Working Neighbourhood Fund (WNF) and Bridging NewcastleGateshead (BNG) housing market renewal – and charts are also available for each Newcastle ward.
The NNIS system continues to draws in more indicators relevant to monitoring neighbourhood renewal issues and with the neighbourhoods being the geographical building blocks, the system is flexible to monitoring progress in a single or group of neighbourhoods and can therefore be applied to any local initiative.
The analysis presented on the website is open to continued improvement. We reserve the right to amend the content accordingly. If you have any comments on the website please contact us.
National Context
Local Context
Working Neighbourhood Fund (WNF)
Bridging Newcastle Gateshead (BNG)
Ward Analysis
Method
Before looking at change within the City, it is useful to review Newcastle’s position in context to the national picture and our recent in-house research (by Newcastle City Council) of six national datasets from the National Floor Target Interactive website (measuring crime, education, health and employment), Land Registry (housing) and DWP (income) suggest Newcastle’s deprivation reduced significantly between 2000 and 2005. Newcastle improved from 21st worst to 46th worst over the period (of 352 LAs). In fact Newcastle’s improvement was 8th highest, leading to the gap between Newcastle and the rest of the country reducing over the period.
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The monitoring change analysis is also used to examine change over time within Newcastle. This analysis aims to a) measure the change in overall vitality of an area and, b) measure the gap between areas. The monitoring change analysis can be presented by any combination of neighbourhoods, the local Working Neighbourhood Fund (WNF) is used here as an example to illustrate the research findings.
Chart 1 (below) shows change in vitality in the WNF areas compared to that in the rest of the City (non-WNF area), and includes the City average for context. The upward trend lines indicate improvements in socio-economic vitality in both areas, as well as the City as a whole.
Chart 1: Monitoring change in the Working Neighbourhood Fund (WNF) and rest of the City (non-WNF), 2001-2007
Chart 2 (below) shows the gap, ie the difference in the Factor Scores, between the WNF and non-WNF areas indicating the gap has marginally reduced over the period.
Chart 2: Comparison of the gap netween Working Neighbourhood Fund (WNF) and the rest of the City (non-WNF area), 2001-2006
The reduction in the size of the chart bars over the period indicates a faster rate of improvement in the WNF area than in the rest of the City, and thus a narrowing of the gap between the two - a key priority for neighbourhood renewal. The 'jump' between 2002 and 2003 seems to reflect the demolition programme in the west WNF area.
Bringing the national and local analysis together, suggests firstly that Newcastle is improving more than most other local authorities and secondly, that this is through progress in both the NRF areas as well as the most prosperous areas - implied though the narrowing of the gap within the City.
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Following on from the analysis above - development of a single measure of change using the Vitality Index data - we have recently focused our research on demonstrating which of the six domains contribute most or least towards the overall change in vitality in an area. The results are illustrated though a series of line charts and have been produced for the following geographies:
Again the WNF area is used as an example to illustrate the research findings. The line chart below represents change in the overall vitality of both the WNF area and Non WNF area (2001-2007) and the remaining charts illustrate which of the six domains contribute most or least towards that change.
Working Neighbourhood Fund charts (pdf, 543Kb)
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The following analysis looks at change during 2001-2007 for various areas within the Bridging NewcastleGateshead (BNG) housing market renewal pathfinder. These include the Newcastle part of BNG only, the three BNG Area Development Frameworks (ADFs) in Newcastle and finally the five BNG Areas of Change (formerly Strategic Commissions) in Newcastle. An analysis is detailed below.
BNG - Newcastle (pdf, 538Kb)
BNG Area Development Frameworks (ADF)
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This analysis looks at change during 2001-2007 for all 26 wards within Newcastle upon Tyne. In each ward profile there are seven charts. Chart one shows the Overall Vitality over the period, whilst the subsequent charts focus upon the individual domains of the Vitality Index. Please select a ward from the list below.
Benwell and Scotswood | Blakelaw | Byker | Castle | Dene | Denton | East Gosforth | Elswick | Fawdon | Fenham | Kenton | Lemington | Newburn | North Heaton | North Jesmond | Ouseburn | Parklands | South Heaton | South Jesmond | Walker | Walkergate | West Gosforth | Westerhope | Westgate | Wingrove | Woolsington
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The data for all years (2001-2007) is brought together as a single dataset and the Factor Analysis is run on 998 observations (142 neighbourhoods for the first five years [2001-2005], 143 neighbourhoods in 2006 and 145 in 2007). This produces seven Factor Scores for each neighbourhood (one for each year). These scores are used to measure change in vitality in a given neighbourhood, where a score above ‘0’ is more prosperous and a score below ‘0’ is more deprived. The model is such that scores will always fall between '0' and '100'. To calculate the score for a group of neighbourhoods such as the NRF area, we select out the Factor Scores for the relevant neighbourhoods and calculate a property-weighted average Factor Score for each year. The monitoring change analysis can be presented by any combination of neighbourhoods.
The monitoring change analysis is dependent on the following criteria: