Newsletter, October 2018 No Images? Click here Hi there, In this month's newsletter, you can find
Free LG Inform and LG Inform Plus Training event on 9th NovemberWe are holding our final LG Inform and LG Inform Plus Training event for 2018 on 9th Nov, at the LGA offices in London. Places are free to local authority employees and you can find out more and book your place on this course using the links below:
For more details on training see the article towards the end of this newsletter. We also run events out in the regions. If you are interested in holding an event at your council please let us know. Any council interested would be allocated up to 10 free places. How happy and satisfied are people in your area?New 2017/18 data on self-reported personal well-being for 2017/18 has just been released via a summary report on LG Inform, so you can check the responses of your residents. To compile this data, participants were asked questions such as ""Overall, how happy did you feel yesterday?” and responses were recorded on a scale of 0 ('not at all') to 10 ('completely'). Interestingly, the average rating to this question for England in 2017/18 was 7.52, a small increase from 7.51 in 2016/17. This data is derived by Office for National Statistics (ONS) from the Annual Population Survey (APS). Find out more about LG Inform dataWe've made a new change to make it easier to find out more about the data values in your reports. Any data values within text will now display as a hyperlink, which allows you to view further information about the source or calculation behind the metric. Click on these links, as shown below, and you’ll get a popup showing where the value came from or how we calculate it. Take a look at a sample basic report to see how this works. Is your council making the most of its subscription?We often speak to people who don’t realise their council is already subscribed to LG Inform Plus, so they’re not making full use of our services and sometimes even pay for equivalent services elsewhere. You can check your council's subscription status here when signed in: If you’re subscribed and you think colleagues might not know, or may not realise all the services your subscription offers, why not let colleagues know via internal email or news? Upcoming new authorities available now on LG Inform Plus neighbourhoodsThe Government Digital Service has added to its Register of English councils combined authorities and authorities that will come into existence on 1 April 2019, replacing others which have an end date of 31 March 2019. You can see the combined authorities and proposed/new authorities in our Natural Neighbourhoods pages and use your reports to see data for them - here’s a report that breaks down the new East Suffolk authority by ward. From next April the new authorities will be shown alongside all pre-existing authorities in our pages. We’ll combine and assign historic data to them for reporting. If you have any questions about how this affects you, please contact us at lginformplus@local.gov.uk. Obesity: the growing crisisLast month we highlighted adult obesity across English Authorities using this report in LG Inform. Following the response to that article, we'd like to spotlight some other relevant information, such as the LG Inform reports on obesity in reception classes and obesity in year 6 classes. You can also view our LG Inform Plus report on obesity, health and wellbeing, which lets you view health data across smaller areas. This report is available to non-subscribing users as an example of the Plus report builder. Finding the right data in LG Inform PlusWith 8,000+ types of metric in LG Inform and LG Inform Plus, finding what you need might seem daunting. However, LG Inform Plus has a themed search page for the type of area you’ve selected, and the report writer limits what you can select based on your chosen area. But if you can’t find what you want, do ask and give us your feedback to help with forthcoming improvements to search. LG Inform Fire Benchmarking Club new quarter opensThe LG Inform Fire Benchmarking Club collection window for 2018-19 Quarter 2 data is now open. The deadline for entering data is Friday 2nd November. This is an entirely voluntarily exercise, the purpose is to provide members with an opportunity to share data for a basket of metrics prior to formal publication. ReportsThe club is a quarterly collection and has been designed to be very quick and easy, and involves simply entering your authority's figure into an online form. Data provided is then loaded into LG Inform at the end of the quarter, you can then create your own reports benchmarking yourself against other participants, or simply view your data in one of the benchmarking reports created by the LGA Research team. Further information
If you know of anyone who would be interested in taking part, please contact us for more information. Running your own regional benchmarking clubThe LGA runs some benchmarking clubs for all English authorities to participate in, but you can also run your own club to share and compare metrics between a smaller group of councils. The My Local Metrics tool lets you define your own types of metric for inclusion in reports alongside those provided by the LGA. You can decide whether the metrics are open or limited to people from only your own council or selected other named councils. So to run a benchmarking club, just define the metric types you need and open them to participating councils. If that sound complicated, contact our Support Team and we’ll talk you through it. Training and eventsAre you interested in learning more about LG Inform or LG Inform Plus? If so, why not sign up for our online training sessions? They're quick, informative and easily accessible from the comfort of your own desk. During these online meetings, we will give you a phone number so you can dial in to a conference call. We will also share a URL so you will be able to see our screen from your desk. Find out about upcoming online training sessions here, or click on any subject name to download a PDF guide. Please email LGInform@local.gov.uk if you are interested in joining any of the sessions. Alternatively, you can book your place on one of our popular training days using the links below:
At these events, you can learn what's available, how to use the tools, and ask us any questions you may have. Did you know...... local authorities need to keep records on battery recycling schemes for four years from the date the scheme started? To find out more about records retention, and whether or not you are keeping your records incorrectly or for too long (and costing yourself money), visit our records retention service. As ever, we're always interested to hear your ideas for improving our services and would love to hear from you, so don't hesitate to get in touch by replying to this newsletter. |