Improvement Service

Manifesto of the Federation of Small Businesses for the Scottish local government elections in May 2012, which makes the case for councils to strengthen efforts across divisions to boost local economies and support jobs.

GoWell is a planned ten-year research and learning programme that aims to investigate the impact of investment in housing, regeneration and neighbourhood renewal on the health and wellbeing of individuals, families and communities. This report uses data from the second wave of the GoWell Community Health and Wellbeing Survey to examine the relationship between the mental wellbeing of residents, and aspects of their housing, neighbourhoods, and communities.

GoWell is a ten-year research and learning programme that aims to investigate the impact of investment in housing, regeneration and neighbourhood renewal on the health and wellbeing of individuals, families and communities. This report uses the GoWell Wave 1 survey data from 2006 to investigate differences in residential, social and psychosocial outcomes between people living in high-rise flats and people living in other types of flats or in houses and makes recommendations for regeneration based on its findings.

This Audit Scotland report attempts to to assess whether community planning partnerships (CPPs) have made a difference to local communities, focusing in particular on their contribution to local economic development.

Scottish Government review of existing literature on community-led approaches to urban regeneration. The paper discusses changes which have taken place in urban regeneration policy over the last 15 years and looks at community engagement, community empowerment and community participation. It explores the role of social governance in promoting or constraining community activity in regeneration. It also outlines existing mechanisms and delivery models to promote community activity within area regeneration and presents evidence of existing practice of community-led regeneration with case studies from Ashton under Lyne and Glasgow.

Agenda for the SLAED launch event

News release for the launch of the SLAED Improvement Guide.

Executive summary for the Guide in print quality.

Full Guide, Print quality version

Executive summary for the Guide, screen quality version.

Full guide, screen quality.

Flyer for SURF awards winners showcase. Usher Hall Edinburgh, 16 March 2011, 1.30 - 4pm

This paper presents unemployment figures for the Falkirk Council area, makes comparisons with other local authorities and presents on the Scottish and UK figures. Figures presented in this Insight are published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) each month and reported quarterly.

This report analyses the number of people who were in receipt of Income Support (IS) at February 2007 in Falkirk. Analysis of the data provides evidence of the extent of poverty within Falkirk as the number of people living at or below Income Support levels can be used as an indication of the number of people living in relative poverty. This paper contains information on the number of cases within two main categories; adults claiming Incapacity Benefits and Lone parents.

The Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD) and its use in funding allocations The Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD) was introduced in 2004 and has been updated for 2006. It aims to allow the effective targeting of policy and funding in order to tackle deprivation in Scotland. The SIMD is reported at a small area (data zone) level and allows for some recognition of deprivation on a local scale. This paper presents a critique of SIMD as a general measure of "deprivation" and its use as a means to allocate funding. SIMD is an area-based measure of multiple deprivation and has been used to allocate funding for neighbourhood regeneration. Since SIMD is a qualitative measure (producing a ranking of Scotland's 6505 data zones), a quantitative measure must be produced from SIMD in order to produce a funding formula. The most common approach is to classify the most deprived 15% of data zones in Scotland as exclusively deprived areas. This 15% threshold appears to have little quantitative justification, as the paper will demonstrate. In addition, SIMD has been used to allocate funding for programmes that were intended to target individual deprivation, rather than area deprivation per se. This has produced funding allocations that differ significantly from the underlying rates of individual deprivation across Scotland. Analysis will be shown to quantify this effect. Finally, there is evidence to suggest that the construction of SIMD will tend to highlight deprivation in certain types of settlement (large and urban conurbations), rather than others (e.g. small, rural and coastal towns). This evidence will be presented.