Agenda item

            The Committee considered the undernoted report:

“1.0     Purpose of Report

1.1        The purpose of the report is to:

-       Update members on the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency’s (NISRA) current consultation on proposals to update the Multiple Deprivation Measure (NIMDM 2017).

2.0       Recommendations

2.1       The Committee is asked to:

-       Note the details of the consultation, the deadline for responses and the event in Belfast on 19 December; and

-       Consider the initial observations at paragraph 3.6 which will form the basis of the council’s response to NISRA’s consultation. A copy of the draft response will be brought to January’s SP&R committee.

3.0       Key issues

            Background

3.1       The Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA) has been commissioned by the Statistics Co-ordinating Group (SCG) of the Northern Ireland Civil Service, which comprises senior policy officials from Government Departments, to undertake an update of the current Northern Ireland Multiple Deprivation Measure (NIMDM 2010).

3.2       The updated measures will be hugely important to a wide variety of interested parties and users. They will continue to play a pivotal role in both informing the targeting of resources to the most deprived areas in Northern Ireland and the monitoring of the spatial impact of policy interventions. The current aim is to publish the updated measures in mid-2017, which will be referred to as NIMDM 2017 throughout this report.

3.3       In arriving at the proposals, consideration has been given to each of the 36 recommendations that arose following the last update in producing the NIMDM 2010. Positive action has been taken in respect of 17 recommendations, which it is considered will improve the updated measures. Six recommendations cannot be advanced at present due to data availability and/or quality issues and will be carried over. One recommendation was considered out of scope for this update, and a further 9 recommendations were rejected by the domain expert groups as not aligning with the agreed indicator principles. The remaining 3 recommendations will be addressed after the initial dissemination phase of the project.

3.4       In summary, the NIMDM 2010 consisted of 30 indicators, 20 of which are proposed to be retained in the updated measures. A further 7 are proposed to be modified in line with newly available data, while 3 are proposed to be omitted due to data quality and/or availability issues. A total of 12 new indicators are also proposed, as a result of addressing the 2010 NIMDM recommendations or as a result of new information having become available.

3.5       The consultation will run for 8 weeks and closes at midnight on 15 January 2017. Should members be interested they can register to attend a supporting Information Session that is being held in Belfast on Monday 19^th December (venue to be confirmed).

3.6       Council Observations

·        The consultation document states that this is an update to the 2010 measure of deprivation and any significant revisions to the methodology are outside of the scope of this work.  The council would suggest that with 12 new indicators and 7 existing indicators being modified, there are significant revisions, particularly around the ‘Income’ and ‘Access to Services’ domains.

·        In order to be considered for inclusion, indicators have to be ‘as up-to-date as possible’. The council would request clarification on this definition as the use of 2011 Census data does not fit well with this. Furthermore, it would be helpful if all indicators could be updated on a frequent (over a reasonable short period of time) and regular basis.

·        The council would suggest that the Income domain may also benefit from a housing-cost or affordability indicator.

·        The council is concerned with the Access to Service domain in that there appears to be a misconception that ‘distance’ is equivalent to ‘access’.  Two of the three indicators include travel time analysis using private and public transport. The Council would contend that this method of measurement needs to take into consideration the congestion within Belfast and other urban areas, especially during peak travel times. 

·        The Council would again highlight comments made in previous responses to MDM consultations that a measure of distance to a service is not necessarily a measure of accessibility of that service given the community geography of Belfast. The segregated patterns of life in the city are marked at all levels and the perception of territory and safety have an impact on residents’ access to services.  The Council believes that this domain should therefore take peace lines and physical barriers into account when measuring these indicators.

·        The Access to Services domain includes an indicator which measures the proportion of properties with a broadband speed below 10 Mbs.  It should be noted that schemes such as the Northern Ireland Broadband Improvement Project and the Superfast Extension Programme are rapidly expanding the availability of high speed broadband across the region, which may make this measure irrelevant in the short-term.

3.7       Geographies Consultation

            In April, the council submitted a response to NISRA’s consultation on the output geography upon which the updated NIMDM 2017 would be produced, recommending that the new measure should be based on geographies that nest within the new 462 Electoral Wards. While NISRA recommended Super Output Areas as the output geography for the updated NIMDM 2017, they did recognise the user need for deprivation statistics for the new Electoral Wards and will endeavour to create deprivation measures for this geography.

3.8       Financial Implications

            There are no specific financial or resource implications.

3.8       Equality and Good Relations Implications

            There are no specific equality or good relations implications.”

            The Committee noted the contents of the report and that a draft response would be submitted to the Committee for consideration in January.