Newsletter, November 2017 No Images? Click here Hi there, In this month's newsletter, you can find
LG Inform Value for Money profiles: the costs of delivering local servicesThe LG Inform Value for Money (VfM) profiles bring together data about the costs, performance and activity of local councils and fire & rescue authorities. They have been designed to help auditors, council staff and fire & rescue authorities understand the costs of delivering local services, and to get an overview of comparative spend and performance over time and relative to others. The public can also access the profiles to help them understand the costs, which is particularly useful in communications and in strategy. The VfM profiles use data published by government departments and other organisations, much of which are official statistics, and the source of each indicator is included in the detailed metric report. Latest Police recorded crime stats availableCrime and disorder and the perception of crime are key factors in influencing the quality of life in an area. Our Police Recorded Crime report, updated quarterly, provides an overview of crime in any selected authority or region and comparison group. For example, in the year ending June 2017, Police forces in England recorded a total of 5.2 million offences showing an annual rise of 13 per cent: 76.50 per 1,000 people for this period. Yorkshire and Humberside had the largest number of police recorded crimes per 1,000 people for this period at 91.47, followed by London who had 89.84 per 1,000. To explore overall crime and the individual types of offence in your or elsewhere, take a look at the full report. 3 key updates: population, area classification and Parliamentary constituenciesIt's been a busy month working behind the scenes on LG Inform and LG Inform Plus and, just in case you haven't caught these already, we're pleased to announce 3 key updates. After receiving the data from our sources, we quickly loaded 2016 mid-year population estimates, which are now live. Thanks to feedback from our members, we've added 2011 ONS area classification groups and sub-groups to LG Inform, allowing you to benchmark your authority's data against organisations with a similar composition. For example, here's the overall employment rate (working age) in Wolverhampton compared to its 2011 area classification group. And finally, the latest round of proposed Parliamentary constituencies have been loaded, meaning you can re-run any reports or dashboards you might have created using the new boundaries. Help with Brownfield Land registerIt's only 38 sleeps away! No, not the holiday season, but the deadline for publishing your authority's brownfield land register on 31 December 2017. The guidance has been updated following a workshop earlier in the month. You can find on our Brownfield Land schema page. You'll also find datasets from authorities who've published their registers successfully, which are useful in understanding how yours should be formatted. If you're using our Validator to check over your files, don't hesitate to get in touch if you need a hand as we've helped nudge two authorities closer to publication. Benchmarking Club Q3 open for fire authoritiesWe have just completed the second quarter collection of the Benchmarking Club for fire authorities, and are pleased to report that six more authorities have joined their colleagues from the South West Fire Performance and Benchmarking Group in submitting data. This voluntary free club allows you to put your own data in to LG Inform against 24 metrics chosen by participants in the club. We have written a pre-populated report that signed-in users can access. This quarter we have added the ‘family group 4’ comparison group to the list of available groups so you can run the report for whichever group best meets your needs. We can add in any other display groups to the system and are open to adding additional metrics if it proves popular, so please get in touch if you would like more information. All details about the Club can be found here. Ordnance Survey PSMA consultation openCapturing feedback on their service and support through a new consultation, Ordnance Survey would like to hear from anyone about their current experience of using PSMA support services, their strengths and weaknesses, and any ideas you have for the future. Using our API with Power BIDuring our webinars on the API recently, several people have mentioned that they'd like to import data from our API into Power BI. It's useful for creating dashboards and conducting data analysis, so we've put together a little video to help you get started. Training and eventsBook your place on one of our popular training days using the links below. You can learn what's available, how to use the tools, and ask us any questions you may have.
If you'd prefer a live demonstration from the comfort of your desk, join one of our online webinars. We'll take you through the most popular features of both tools and there's also opportunity to ask questions. They're a great way to refresh your knowledge. For more information or to book your place, visit our Online Training pages. 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. |