Warwickshire economic briefing

Warwickshire Observatory and Warwickshire County Council’s Regeneration Strategy Team have joined forces to produce their first economic bulletin to monitor the impact of the economic downturn on Warwickshire.
The bulletins are scheduled to be released monthly, and the first issue begins by looking at the national picture with the country now officially in recession following two [...]

Tender for research into environmental technologies labour market in the West Midlands

[This tender closed on 13th February 2008]
We  have been commissioned by the Learning & Skills Council and Advantage West Midlands to undertake research into the skills and labour market issues facing employers in environmental technologies in the West Midlands.
As part of this work, we’re inviting research organisations to tender for a project to carry out [...]

Black Country recession updates

Our colleagues at the Black Country Observatory have produced the first Black Country Recession Intelligence report which can now be downloaded from the Reports section of their site.
These reports are being produced on a monthly basis by the Observatory as part of  a ‘Black Country Recession Intelligence Group’ comprising of representatives from the Black Country [...]

Cigarettes and alcohol

The Office for National Statistics has published the latest installment of their annual General Household Survey (GHS) which provides data on smoking and drinking among adults in Great Britain, with figures available by gender, age and government office region.

Substance misuse in the West Midlands

The National Treatment Agency (NTA) for Substance Misuse  has today published its report, Getting to grips with substance misuse among young people, which indicates that increasing numbers of teenagers in the West Midlands are receiving help for drug and alcohol problems through increased access to services in the region.
The report shows that the vast majority [...]

Making information more accessible

How to make complex information available to a wider audience and how to make it more easily understand? Those were questions being considered in Coventry this week.
On Tuesday 20th January, Coventry City Council hosted a meeting designed to share ideas on how regional partners were using software to make their information more readily available.
The main [...]

Local Government Association analysis and research bulletin

The Local Government Association publish a useful monthly analysis and research bulletin on the key issues and developments in research relating to, or impacting on, local government.
The December 2008 edition (PDF, 150kb) pulls together latest research developments, including:

Local Government Workforce Survey 2008
Jobcentre Plus annual employer survey 2007/08 (PDF, 3mb)
Survey of the impact of the economic [...]

Got something useful you’d like to share?

As part of our strategic objectives, we aim to provide effective access to intelligence to encourage higher standards of evidence-​based decision-​making. One of the ways in which we do this is by providing a resource catalogue of research, data and intelligence about the West Midlands and its sub-regions.
The catalogue is built through contributions from Observatory [...]

Secondment opportunity for a Research Assistant

We currently have an opportunity for a Research Assistant to join the West Midlands Regional Observatory on a 12-​month secondment covering maternity leave.
You’ll provide technical and administrative support to the Observatory’s Research Team, and play an important part in compiling and maintaining data, preparing reports and managing enquiries.
More information and details on how to apply [...]

Local information systems resource pack

If you’re interested in local information systems, and how mapping and data visualisation can inform planning of public services, have a look at GeoWise’s local information systems resource pack.
The resource pack pulls together lots of seminars, case studies and reference documents based on implementations of InstantAtlas, a geographic data visualisation tool, across local government and [...]

Should the Observatory keep blogging?

This Observations blog was set up in July 2008. Formally, the aim is to support one of our strategic objectives:
Provide effective access to intelligence to encourage higher standards of evidence–based decision-making
Also, as the first foray into blogging at the Observatory, it’s an experiment to see what happens when we share information in this way.
Six months [...]

Local names for Middle Layer Super Output Areas (MSOAs)

A member of the West Midlands Regional Data and Intelligence Network has raised a query with us about local names for Middle Layer Super Output Areas or MSOAs (find an explanation of what super output areas are below).
Each MSOA is identified by a nine character code (for example E02000001). The Office for National Statistics gave all [...]

Creative industries economic estimates

The annual creative industries economic estimates are now available from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
Statistics are provided on:

Gross value added of the creative industries
Exports of services for the creative industries
Creative employment
Numbers of businesses within the creative industries in the UK

The figures are for 2006/2007, the latest available period.
Dave Harte has usefully pulled out [...]

West Midlands local development annual monitoring reports

The Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 requires local planning authorities to regularly monitor planning policies that affect the planning and development of their areas.

Each council is required to produce an Annual Monitoring Report (AMR) which is published in December to assess the effectiveness of policy in the Local Development Framework.
These show whether the progress [...]

Job vacancy at the Cancer Intelligence Unit

Our partners at the West Midlands Cancer Intelligence Unit are advertising the following vacancy:
Cancer Registration Information Officer

Band 5 £20,225 – £26,123 (1 April 2008 )
Full-time 37.5 hours a week
Fixed term 2 year post
Closing date:  22 January 2009
Interview date: 4 February 2009