Small and medium-sized enterprise 2007 statistics published

The Department for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR) has just published its 2007 Statistics on Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) in the UK and its regions, including a statistical press release and a suite of data tables.
This year’s release includes the bi-annual regional breakdown of the national figures, listing the numbers of enterprises [...]

Economic activity in the West Midlands continues to slow

Latest economic output data suggest that the regional economy continues to slow down.
The Purchasing Managers Index is based on surveys undertaken by Markit Economics on behalf of the Royal Bank of Scotland. It is an important indicator of current market conditions.
The index is derived such that a level of 50 signals no change since the [...]

Crime in England and Wales 2007/08

The Home Office has recently released their annual publication Crime in England and Wales for 2007/08  This is the seventh report in the series which combines reporting of police report crime and the British Crime Survey.
The police recorded and BCS figures are a complementary series that together provide a better picture of crime than could [...]

Birmingham boasts tourism boost

Marketing Birmingham released their Annual Visitor Survey 2007 earlier this week.
The research, carried out in August and September last year, indicate that a record 31.9 million people visited the city for leisure in 2007. A resulting £4.4 billion was spent in the city as a result.
The number of visitors was a 1.5 million increase [...]

Sub-regional information sources

If you are looking for specific data or information about one of the sub-regions, in addition to the Regional Resource Catalogue on wmro.org, you might also like to try one of the sub-regional intelligence units.
Here is a list of some of them to help you track down the information that you need.

Herefordshire Partnership
Worcestershire Research & [...]

Road Statistics 2007: Traffic, Speeds and Congestion

The Department for Transport published Road Statistics 2007: Traffic, Speeds and Congestion on 24 July 2008.  This bulletin includes the first release of National Statistics on 2007 Road Traffic, Free Flow Vehicle Speeds in Great Britain, and Traffic Speeds on the Strategic Road Network in England.
The bulletin also includes further information about congestion on urban and [...]

176,550!

We receive a number of enquiries through our research enquiries service. One of the most frequently asked questions is “how many businesses are there in the West Midlands?”
The Inter Departmental Business Register (IDBR) is a key source of information on business activity and can be broken down to Local Authority District level.  It is updated annually, containing data [...]

Data presentation techniques

On 18 July, several members of the Observatory attended a masterclass on data presentation hosted by the Association of Regional Observatories. Speakers at the event included Ed Swires-Hennessy (Local Government Data Unit, Wales), Alan Smith (Head of Data Visualisation, Office for National Statistics) and Robert Radburn (Research and Information Team, Leicestershire County Council).
It’s going to [...]

Keynote address at Observatory conference by “the most powerful person in the West Midlands”

Liam Byrne MP, Minister for the West Midlands, was announced as the most powerful person in the West Midlands on Friday of last week according to the Birmingham Post’s “Power 50″ list.
Liam will give the key-note address at the Observatory’s annual conference on 13th October 2008, launching the State of the Region synthesis report and focusing on the importance [...]

The role of work placements in graduate retention

The Regional Observatory’s skills team have recently completed a major research project on graduate retention, attraction and employment for the Regional Skills Partnership and the West Midlands Higher Education Association.
One of the key findings is that 40% of graduates leave the region to find employment, especially in higher skilled, higher paying jobs in high value-added [...]

Sports participation in England

Sport England has recently published a series of sports information packs for 42 sports which bring together research data from the Active People Survey, Taking Part Survey and Sport England’s market segmentation research.
The packs provide a detailed overview of each sport with data and analysis including:

Participation data by key demographic groups
Demographic profile of participants
Seasonal and [...]

Forthcoming research from the West Midlands Cultural Observatory

You may be interested to know about research currently being conducted at the West Midlands Cultural Observatory.
Over the next year, we will be producing three evidence papers which draw together what we know about the impact of culture on ‘prosperity’, ‘people’ and ‘place’ in the West Midlands. Not only will this help to inform regional [...]

State of the Countryside 2008 report released

The Commission for Rural Communities launched their tenth annual State of the Countryside report on 16th July 2008. The report assesses the way rural England has changed over the last ten years by considering the social, economic and environmental issues facing rural England.
The report is split into three chapters: living in the countryside, economic [...]

Severn Trent Draft Water Resources Plan – Consultation Event

Severn Trent’s Water Resources Management Plan sets out how they intend to provide supplies of water to customers over the next 25 years and beyond.  The Plan explains the challenges faced and the uncertainties to deal with in planning for the future. It explains the range of options open to ensure that the future demand for water [...]

Support for e-business adoption

The last month has seen the launch of a new business service from the Observatory. We now have an online directory of organisations and websites who will support SMEs in all aspects of e-business adoption. If your business hasn’t yet got any e-business capability or is looking to broaden or expand existing capability then you will find [...]