Child Poverty Dashboard
The team have been working to update our dashboard that displays child poverty statistics for small areas in local authorities. We have now added the most recently released children in low-income families dataset, as well as an option to view all of the historic values within your local authority. In addition, we have added a new tab, allowing users to access statistics for the Scottish Child Payment for the first time. You can find the latest version of the dashboard using this link: https://scotland.shinyapps.io/is-Child-Poverty-Map/
Sub-Council Area Population Projections
The team have been engaging with the National Records of Scotland (NRS), local authorities, and other partners as we prepare to update the Sub-Council Area Population Projections. The new projections will be developed following publication of small area population estimates and sub-national population projections by the NRS, and are likely to be published in early 2026. We are currently engaging with local authorities to understand which areas, such as Multi-Member Wards or Housing Market Areas, would be most useful for these data. If you have any thoughts about these geographies or questions about anything else related to the projections, get in touch at research@improvementservice.org.uk
LARIA-ONS Local Event
The team worked with ONS Local and the Local Area Research and Intelligence Association (LARIA) to host an online event focusing on enhancing evidence use in Scottish local policymaking. The event had over 100 attendees from across local government and academia, sharing barriers and enablers to using evidence. We hope to deliver more frequent events encouraging connections between researchers, data providers, and policy experts through the LARIA network. Presentations from the event can be found using the following links: speaker1, speaker2, speaker3, speaker4. If you would be interested in being part of developing future sessions through the LARIA network you can register your interest here: https://njmok7zy3oa.typeform.com/to/Fwpw0zGv