Draft Coventry and Warwickshire local economic assessment for consultation

Warwickshire County Council and Coventry City Council have carried out a sub-regional economic assessment. The draft economic assessment is now available and comments are invited.

The economic assessment and feedback form are available on the Warwickshire County Council website. There are also supporting papers on innovation, future sectoral growth, functional economic geography and business starts and growth.

New issue of Local Government Association analysis and research bulletin

The December 2010 issue of the Local Government Association’s analysis and research bulletin (pdf, 328kb) is now available.

The bulletin highlights new research and statistics on:

• Employment, pay and workforce trends
• Transport
• Housing
• Education and children’s services
• Environment
• Health and social care
• Local government
• Europe
• Population and migration
• Culture, tourism and sport
• Crime and disorder
• Communities and place shaping

The current and previous issues are available on the Local Government Association’s website.

The future of the Observatory

Following the announcement of its abolition, Advantage West Midlands is seeking new ownership for the West Midlands Regional Observatory.

Advantage West Midlands received two expressions of interest to an open bidding process, which closed on 19th November. Marketing Birmingham has been selected as the preferred bidder and Advantage West Midlands is currently negotiating with them. The Agency’s Board is expected to make a final decision on the outcome of those negotiations at its January meeting.

Being the preferred bidder means that Marketing Birmingham have exclusive rights to negotiate with Advantage West Midlands re the assets of the Observatory. There is no commitment on either side to a sale or transfer in advance of those negotiations.

As the Agency is now focused on its closure, the Observatory will continue to operate, but at a greatly reduced capacity. As such, responses to enquiries may take longer than normal and our website (www.wmro.org) will be updated less frequently.

For more info, contact:
From Advantage West Midlands – Iain Neville tel: 0121 380 3563, email: iainnev [at] gmail.com
From Marketing Birmingham – Tim Manson tel: 0121 202 5031, email: Tim.Manson [at] marketingbirmingham.com

Local Enterprise Partnerships need to act to reinvigorate the private sector

Weaknesses in the structure of the West Midlands economy mean that it was hit particularly hard by the recent recession and is likely to see further job losses over the next five years.

Our latest briefing paper (pdf, 408kb), produced as part of our West Midlands Skills Assessment 2010, reveals that the West Midlands has a weaker private sector than other parts of the country. The West Midlands has poorer representation of higher value added activities and high growth firms with the potential to create new, skilled jobs.

As a result the West Midlands has seen its share of jobs in the public sector rise more rapidly than anywhere else in the country. It is particularly vulnerable to job losses from the spending cuts announced by the government.

We forecast that West Midlands Gross Value Added (GVA) will grow by only 8% (£8.8 billion) between 2010 and 2015 and there will be a net fall in employment of more than 38,000 people.

Endorsement of our Economic Inclusion research

Here’s a short video featuring Trudi Elliott, Chair of the West Midlands Economic Inclusion Panel, endorsing our economic inclusion research:

Watch on viddler

Participating in culture and sport equivalent to a pay rise?

Research funded by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport has suggested that the boost to individuals’ wellbeing achieved through weekly participation in sport is equivalent to £11,000 per year in household income. Cinema (c.£9,000) and concert (c.£9,000) attendance are not far behind in terms of annual ‘value’.

The research, Understanding the value of engagement in culture and sport (pdf, 291kb), which is based on a statistical analysis of the British Household Panel Survey, estimates the equivalent boost in household income required to achieve the same boost in wellbeing generated by cultural participation.

The work is something of a departure from previous estimates (such as those which calculate the monetary value of sport by referring to the cost of physical inactivity to the NHS) in that it factors in other influences on wellbeing such as socioeconomic status, thereby isolating the effect of culture.

As the authors note, the findings have the potential to guide policymakers, indicating the level of investment that may be warranted in interventions aimed at increasing participation in culture and sport.

Related links

• Understanding the value of engagement in culture and sport – full report (pdf, 291kb)
• Technical report (pdf, 1.11mb)
• DCMS ‘drivers, impacts and value’ research web page

International Open Data Hackathon – Birmingham

A combined Birmingham Open Data Hack Day and RHOK (Random Hacks of Kindness) will be held on December 4th 2010, hosted at Faraday Wharf, Aston Science Park, Central Birmingham.

For info, visit the open data day website.

Questions/comments to bodaceacat at yahoo.co.uk

Sandwell Trends local information system

Sandwell Trends is a local information system providing data, intelligence and analysis about the people and places in Sandwell.

The website, produced by Research Sandwell, provides:

• A data warehouse which stores detailed data that you can interrogate.
• Mapping and charting tools.
• Topic pages on specific data topics.
• Briefings on various topics, including research methodology.
• Tools to compares with each other.

Home page: www.sandwelltrends.info

Place Survey themed page

Making the CASE for culture

Last month saw the culmination of a Department for Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) project to bring together a range of statistics and figures on the impact of culture at local, regional and national level. In addition to individual summary reports for each English region, you can download recent data on:

• Economic impact (xls, 6.7mb) – employment, turnover etc. within cultural organisations.
• Investment data – levels of public/private investment in capital (xls, 1.8mb) and non-capital (xls, 7.9mb) cultural projects.
• Tourism data (xls, 613kb) – overnight visits by domestic tourists, visits to visitor attractions etc.
• Education data (xls, 4.9mb) – number of Higher Education students for cultural subjects etc.
• Engagement data (xls, 915kb) – levels of participation in cultural activity.
• Physical assets data (xls, 1.3mb) – count, percentage and density of cultural assets.

Notably, some of the spreadsheets also contain wider demographic data that gives a useful hint as to the kind of analyses users could undertake.

For example, the working age population data for each local authority and region (contained in the investment spreadsheets) allows users to calculate investment per head of working age population (or per 10,000 of working age population as in the summary reports) without having to hunt high and low for the population data separately!

For further advice on how to use the data contact CASE (case [at] culture.gsi.gov.uk). Alternatively, feel free to contact us here at the Cultural Observatory (lauren.amery [at] artscouncil.org.uk / tel 0121 631 5705).

Related links

• CASE regional insights webpage
• West Midlands summary report (pdf, 299kb)

Notes

‘CASE’ is a joint DCMS research programme involving Sport England, Arts Council England, English Heritage and Museums, Libraries & Archives Council (MLA).

The definition of ‘culture’ used in the research focuses on those sectors most relevant to the CASE partnership, consisting of Arts Council England, English Heritage, Museums, Librarires and Archives Council and Sport England. So, for example, while data on tourism can be downloaded separately, tourism sector organisations such as hotels and restaurants have not been factored into ‘CASE sector’ analyses.

Office for National Statistics West Midlands newsletter September-October 2010

This is the last newsletter from ONS West Midlands – the regional statistician service ceased in the West Midlands as of 21 October 2010.

The newsletter contains information on statistical consultations together with recent and planned ONS publications that might be of interest to you.

Local Enterprise Partnerships approved

The Business Secretary, Vince Cable, announced the approval of twenty four local enterprise partnership proposals earlier today. Those approved included the following from the West Midlands:

• Birmingham & Solihull with E. Staffordshire, Lichfield &Tamworth
• Coventry & Warwickshire
• Stoke-on-Trent & Staffordshire
• The Marches

Those not approved at this stage included:

• The Black Country
• Worcestershire
• The West Midlands overarching proposal

Read more on the Birmingham Post website

A map of approved local enterprise partnerships is available from geocommons.com

What will spending cuts mean for the West Midlands?

Tomorrow sees the long awaited publication of the government’s Comprehensive Spending Review. It will end months of speculation by setting up where the cuts in government spending will fall and how deep they will be. But what might it all mean for the West Midlands?

To try and answer this question, the Observatory has carried out a number of pieces of work over the last few weeks. These are summarised in a new report published today.  Amongst its findings are that:

• An estimated £43 billion as spent on public services in the West Midlands in 2008-09 and the public sector employed nearly half a million people
• More than 80,000 public service jobs could be lost in the West Midlands by 2016
• Up to 300,000 private sector jobs are at risk due to spending cuts, although actual job losses will be lower than that
• The places which will be hardest hit in the short term are those with concentrations of public sector jobs, such as Birmingham, Bromsgrove, Dudley, Shrewsbury, Stafford, Wolverhampton and Worcester
• In the longer term, some of these places are likely to recover well, but others will continue to suffer because they have weaker economies. Places most vulnerable in the longer term include Birmingham, Dudley, Sandwell, Stoke-on-Trent, Walsall, Wolverhampton and Wyre Forest (Kidderminster)

The report draws on information from a number of other reports published by the Observatory in recent weeks. These include a briefing paper on the local impact of public sector job cuts, a series of projections based on our Policy Assessment Model and a report identifying locations vulnerable to cuts in public sector spending.

New Fit for the Future articles published: what’s your vision of a low carbon future?

We’ve launched a new website as part of our Fit for the Future project. Earlier this year we asked:

In your view, what would a successful low carbon economy look like and how should the West Midlands transform its economy to meet that vision?

The new website presents five articles given in response, written by contributors working in manufacturing, local government, education, public and voluntary sectors.

We want the articles to stimulate a debate so, this year, we decided to present the articles in an online commentable form. Please do visit the website, have a read and add your comments to the articles.

Local impact of public sector job cuts featured on BBC Politics Show

In advance of the government’s spending review announcement on Wednesday 20 October, the BBC Politics Show West Midlands discussed the impact of public sector job losses in the West Midlands.

They interviewed Andy Phillips, Head of Skills Research at the Observatory, and featured our recent briefing paper which examines the local impact of public sector job cuts (pdf, 351kb).

The story is available to watch on the BBC iPlayer for the next six days.

Efficient use of water – a great opportunity

Once more the West Midlands Regional Observatory joins Blog Action Day. This is an annual event held every 15 October and unites the world’s bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day with the aim of sparking a global discussion and driving collective action. This year’s topic is water.

Our low carbon research has highlighted that the greatest opportunities for moving towards a low carbon economy are related to ‘decarbonising’ the current business processes. In other words, have more efficient processes in place. This can be achieved either through using resources more efficiently (for example water, electricity and raw materials) or by reducing the amount of waste produced.

Businesses in the West Midlands are already taking advantage of these opportunities. Here are a few examples of companies using water more efficiently.