With 10 of us attending via Teams, it was good to catch up! Louise Reeve (LARIA North East Organiser) led with a presentation on ‘The Census: What’s New, and What’s In It for You?’, describing how ONS plan to increase digital participation in Census to 75% in 2021, and get the data outputs to users in a way that works best for them. We discussed both plans for the Census, and issues that members were facing and expect to face in future, such as:

• For some attendees, the challenge of successfully carrying out their regular role whilst at the same time completing a Data Analyist Apprenticeship – and whether local authorities have fully embraced data science and what it can offer us.
• The extent to which local authorities are able to do ‘in-depth’ or ‘proactive’ research, rather than reactive research.
• How we will manage workloads in 2021 when tasks that were put on hold during the pandemic have to be caught up with.
• The difficulties of keeping up with what’s happening when no-one’s in the office – and how we’re looking forward to hopefully getting back into it in 2021.
• The logistical difficulties of the upcoming vaccination programme.
• The opportunities offered by Census 2021, particularly for those of us managing data platforms such as Durham Insight.

Despite the challenges, all agreed it was good to catch up. We’ll have another event soon!

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LARIA North East Autumn 2019 Networking Event

Organised by LARIA (Local Area Research and Information Association) and free to attend, this is your chance to get together with other local area researchers in the North East and learn about new research techniques.
A more informal session than previously, we will have a presentation on plans for the Census 2021 by Louise Reeve (Assistant Census Liaison Manager for Newcastle City Council), and the rest of the time will be set aside for networking and general discussion.
If you have any queries, contact Louise Reeve, LARIA North East Co-ordinator, and I’ll be happy to answer them: louise.reeve@newcastle.gov.uk.

Book your place here: LARIA North East Networking 1 December 2020

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We first heard from Andy Davis from Warwick University on the topic “Better Together: Councils and universities working to improve local areas”. Andy discussed new opportunities for councils and universities to pool their resources for better information, such as the LGA Leading Places programme. For more information please contact Andy here: A.Davis.4@warwick.ac.uk.

Andy Davis presenting.

Next, John Mitchell from Durham County Council discussed how Durham County Council’s new Durham Insight platform provides better information to the council and their partners.  For more information about Durham Insight please contact John Mitchell here: John.Mitchell@durham.gov.uk

LARIA North East members had mentioned at earlier networking events that they wanted more time to get to know each other, so we had a long tea and coffee break for people to discuss their projects and opportunities to work together.

Following the networking time, Richard Potter from Analytics Cambridge Ltd. presented on the LGA’s “Intelligent Council Project”. This aimed to explore what helps and what is needed for a Council to improve its intelligence, and to promote good practice and evidence-based decision-making.

Finally, Louise Reeve, the LARIA North East Regional Organiser presented on “What’s happening with LARIA nationally?”, including the online forum, the results of a recent project about what’s going on in local government research project, and the upcoming LARIA Annual Conference in May 2019. Feedback on the event was generally positive and included comments such as:

“It was useful to network and find out what others were working on. It would be helpful to know in advance who was attending, what their role is and what they’re currently working on.”

Topics that people wanted future events to cover included:

• Brexit
• How people have used research and intelligence to change service delivery or make savings.
• How people have justified their role within their organisation by demonstrating the real impact and value of their work.
• Health analytics.
• Power BI and other systems used to manage data.
• “It would be useful to keep the Intelligent Council initiative on the agenda given that some authorities are supposed to piloting a framework or similar this spring.”

Thanks to everyone who attended for making it such an amazing event. The next one will be in Autumn 2019. Watch this space!

Louise Reeve

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Laria NE October 2018 Event

The third LARIA North East Networking event was well-attended, with 15 attendees and four presenters. Held at Darlington Town Hall (thanks to Zoe Foster and Darlington Borough Council for providing the venue), we enjoyed a mixture of presentations on information management and networking, and the chance to meet other North East researchers.

We first heard from Dr Christopher Parker at Newcastle City Council on the topic “Preventing homelessness in the context of welfare reform: Newcastle upon Tyne’s Homelessness Prevention Trailblazer”. Newcastle is one of only three national early adopters for the Homelessness Prevention Trailblazer, a public service transformation programme focused on preventing homelessness at an earlier stage by working with a wider group of residents at risk to help them before they reach crisis point.

Next, Andrew Billett (Public Health England) gave a talk on “Measuring health inequalities: investigating a rise in early mortality due to heart disease in Teesside”, and how PHE were able to use public health surveillance techniques to reach conclusions, such as learning that the flattening of the trend in the early mortality rate due to chronic heart disease in Middlesbrough since 2010 was caused by an increase in the number of deaths due to chronic ischaemic heart disease.

Following a tea and coffee break, Warren Hatter from With The Grain and Stuart Cuthbertson from Sunderland City Council presented on “Using behavioural insight in local government: lessons from Sunderland”. They discussed how behavioural insights can help public sector organisations reduce demand, improve outcomes and increase resilience, looking at case examples from increasing benefits applications in Sutton, and encouraging the take-up of stop smoking services in pregnancy in Sunderland.

In the final part of the event, we moved onto networking and the “Three things I’m working on…” forms. These aim to capture information three projects each of us is working on, three issues we think will be important in the future, and three things we are interested in learning more about in future. Everyone took the chance to network and discuss these issues with fellow researchers, and the information on the forms will be used to plan future LARIA North East networking events. Finally, Louise Reeve, the LARIA North East Regional Organiser (me!) presented on “What’s happening with LARIA nationally?” This included feedback from the recent LARIA Awayday to plan the future of the organisation, the option for members to host an ONS Census Economic Forum, and feedback from the recent Public Affairs Committee Annual Conference. There was also some cake!

Thanks to everyone who attended for making it such an amazing event. The next one will be in Spring 2019. Watch this space, and contact me if you have any ideas for what you’d like us to cover: louise.reeve@newcastle.gov.uk.

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Attendees from across the North East at the last LARIA NE networking event in Durham.

The latest LARIA networking event for local area and social researchers in the North East will take place on 1 October 2018, 1-4.30pm Darlington Town Hall. We’ll be finding out more about:

• using behavioural insight in local government from With the Grain and Sunderland City Council
• preventing homelessness from Newcastle City Council’s Homelessness Prevention Trailblazer, and
• measuring health inequalities in Teesside from Public Health England.

Come along and network with local area and social researchers in the North East. There will be cake!

We look forward to seeing you – book here: LARIA North East October 2018 or contact the organiser, Louise Reeve, at: louise.reeve@newcastle.gov.uk or ring: 0191 277 7508.

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