Introduction
The East Midlands Regional Assembly's 'State of the Region' report monitors the progress the region has made in achieving the sustainable development objectives of the region's Integrated Regional Strategy. It looks at the change that has occurred in the region’s performance and benchmarks the region with other areas. The benchmark that is used as frequently as possible is England. Where an England comparator is not available a ‘UK’, ‘GB’ or ‘England and Wales’ figure may be used instead, but this will always be indicated. Where information is available the report indicates the relative performance of county and unitary authority areas in the region.
As far as possible the report draws on indicators used in regional strategies particularly the Regional Economic Strategy (RES) and the Regional Spatial Strategy (RSS). Where one of the State of the Region indicators is also used in other strategies it is marked in the tables (see key). The indicators are grouped together under social, environmental, economic and spatial objectives of the Integrated Regional Strategy (IRS) Framework.
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IRS FRAMEWORK OBJECTIVES | |
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1. To ensure that the existing and future housing stock meets the housing needs of all communities in the region.
2. To improve health and reduce health inequalities by promoting healthy lifestyles, protecting health and providing health services.
3. To provide better opportunities for people to value and enjoy the region’s heritage and participate in cultural and recreational activities.
4. To improve community safety, reduce crime and the fear of crime.
5. To promote and support the development and growth of social capital across the communities of the region.
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6. To protect, enhance and manage the rich diversity of natural, cultural and built environment and archaeological assets of the region.
7. To enhance and conserve the environmental quality of the region by increasing the environmental infrastructure.
8. To manage prudently the natural resources of the region including water, air quality, soil and minerals.
9. To minimise energy usage and to develop the region’s renewable energy resource, reducing dependency on non-renewable resources.
10. To involve people through changes to lifestyles and at work, in preventing and minimising adverse local, regional and global environmental impacts. | |
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11. To create high quality employment opportunities and to develop a culture of ongoing engagement and excellence in learning and skills, giving the region a competitive edge in how we acquire and exploit knowledge.
12. To develop a strong culture of enterprise and innovation, creating a climate within which entrepreneurs and world-class businesses can flourish.
13. To provide the physical conditions for a modern economic structure, including infrastructure to support the use of new technologies. | |
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14. To ensure that the location of development makes efficient use of existing physical infrastructure and helps to reduce the need to travel.
15. To promote and ensure high standards of sustainable design and construction, optimising the use of previously developed land and buildings.
16. To minimise waste and to increase the re-use and recycling of waste materials.
17. To improve accessibility to jobs and services by increasing the use of public transport, cycling and walking and reduce traffic growth and congestion. | |
Although more data is becoming available, enabling the production of indicators that measure a region’s performance, there are still a number of areas where accurate data is difficult to obtain and where often proxy measures have to be adopted e.g. environmental indicators. Although great improvements have occurred in the availability of data the complexity associated with its collection and analysis means that in some cases the data available often predates the period for which information is required e.g. health data. As far as possible the information gathered for the State of the Region report is consistent with that obtained for the evidence base of the Regional Economic Strategy and with the information collected to monitor the Regional Spatial Strategy. Consequently, some of the base year data and indicator definitions used this year may vary from previous reports in order to enhance this consistency with the other key strategies.
As in last years State of the Region report, a broader and more detailed commentary on the intelligence provided by the indicators and how the information relates to policy developments is developed. A detailed set of references and website links is provided to enable the interested reader to undertake further investigation of data sets and strategies. In addition to the quantitative information on the performance of the region and the textual commentary, the State of the Region report provides a visual interpretation of the progress the region is making in each area by using directional arrows supported by a traffic light system. A green arrow pointing upwards indicates an improvement in the indicator while a red arrow downwards indicates a worsening in the indicator.
A number of tasks have been undertaken to improve the State of the Region report for 2008 and enable it to meet the criteria set by government for refreshing the IRS. The government wishes to ensure that ‘…Monitoring and reporting arrangements capture the region’s contribution to delivering the priorities in Securing the Future’ (March 2005), the UK government Sustainable Development Strategy. The government put together a suite of 68 national sustainable development indicators to support this in December 2005, data is updated annually and is currently available for 46 of these indicators, at the regional level.
A mapping exercise has been undertaken to compare the content of the State of the Region report with the national indicators for which data is available at the regional level. In light of these findings, a new indicator set for the 2008 report has been developed.
Further work has also been undertaken to ensure that clear links are made to Sustainable Community Strategies and Local Area Agreements in the implementation section of the refreshed IRS Framework. This has been achieved by ensuring that, wherever possible, data for the State of the Region 2008 is sourced from local authorities and at the most local level possible.
The data tables within the State of the Region report for 2008 clearly show where data is from the National data set or from local authorities as outlined above.
Work has been undertaken to collate the regional targets for the indicators from the individual regional strategies/action plans for inclusion within the State of the Region report 2008. These targets, where available are clearly stated in the commentary and /or presented within graphs. It should be noted that more work is required in future years to get a comprehensive set of targets.
Improvements have also been made this year to how the State of the Region information is presented. In addition to the information shown for each IRS objective in last years report, the 2008 report also contains graphs showing progress over time and comparing to National figures, and graphs and maps showing the sub regional data and therefore highlighting more clearly sub regional differences and is more visually pleasing.
The Key to the Tables is available here.
Download map of local authorities in the East Midlands (184KB PDF)
Inequalities in the East Midlands>>
Last updated: 9th May 2008