The Government uses the ID 2000 as the primary, but not the sole, basis for the allocation of resources to deprived areas. Some of the uses are listed below. Both policy related and academic researchers have increasingly drawn on the ID 2000, using either the overall IMD score, Domain scores or occasionally specific sets of items (many of which have been released through the ONS Neighbourhood Statistics website). Again it is only possible to give a limited number of examples.
Central Government
The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister
The Neighbourhood Renewal Unit of the ODPM uses the ID 2000 to inform its funding for several programmes.
The Neighbourhood Renewal Fund (NRF) is distributed to districts that fall into the 50 most deprived in one of the six district level summary measures of the ID 2000 a total of 81 districts. In addition, seven extra districts are included which were in the 50 most deprived areas on any of the four district measures of the ILD 1998.
The ID 2000 also provided the first round of data for the new Neighbourhood Statistics Service (NeSS).
The ODPM's Neighbourhood Management Pathfinder Programme also targets areas selected from among authorities that include more than one ward in the most deprived 10% of wards in England as measured by the IMD 2000 (excluding authorities with a New Deal for Communities Partnership).
The Department of Trade and Industry
The Single Regeneration Budget, which since 1994 has approved over 900 regeneration schemes and funded over £5.5 billion worth of programmes, has along with the Land and Property programme been subsumed into the larger Regional Development Agencies Single Pot fund as of April 2002. While the OPDM is still the largest single contributor to the fund, the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) has since November 2001 had overall responsibility for all grant in aid to Regional Development Agencies (RDAs). The DTI bases these allocations upon the ID 2000 as well as certain labour market indicators. The 2000 Spending Review, which expanded the administrative role of the RDAs, determined funding from 2001-2004 for all domestic regeneration programmes using the ID 2000. In 2002-03, £430 million or roughly 28% of the £2.55 billion single pot budget was allocated based upon the ID 2000.
The DTI also uses the ID 2000 for allocating funds under the Small Business Service (SBS), established in 2000 to encourage enterprise in deprived areas. In 2001-02, ?7.5 million of SBS Core Services funding was based on the ID 2000. Administered by the SBS, the Phoenix Fund representing £96 million over four years to provide support for entrepreneurs from disadvantaged groups, allocated £15 million in 2001-02 and £19 million in 2002-03 based upon the ID 2000.
Department for Education and Skills
An ongoing piece of work for the Department of Health, making new recommendations on resource allocations formulas for NHS services, has used various domains and indicators from the ID 2000. One of the important motivations for this work was to enable formulas to be derived that did not rely on the census but instead contained data contemporaneous with the point of allocation. The ID 2000 work has been key to achieving this goal.
Department for Transport
The Urban Bus Challenge, begun in 2001, will receive £46 million over the next three years and will focus on urban areas suffering from multiple deprivation as measured by the ID 2000.
The Department for Culture, Media and Sport
Sponsored jointly with the Department for Education and Skills, the Capital Modernization Fund for Space and Sport seeks to provide in deprived areas around 300 new sports and arts facilities in primary schools. The Government has allocated £75 million for the programme through 2004. Sixty-five local education authorities, selected using a number of indices of educational, socio-economic, sporting and cultural deprivation including ID 2000, have been invited to participate in the scheme.
The Department has also allocated £40 million through 2004 to the Arts Council of England for the establishment of 16 pilot Creative Partnerships in deprived areas to provide opportunities for young people to experience artistic and creative activities. The ID 2000, along with other measures of economic and educational deprivation and an assessment of cultural deprivation, was used in determining these areas.
Many of the grants made by the National Lottery funding bodies include tackling multiple deprivation as an objective and they often use the ID 2000. This is illustrated by the £169 million Fair Share scheme, which explicitly targets areas based on the ID 2000. More generally, since the National Lottery began, 41% of the total allocation of funds has gone to the 50 most deprived local authorities in England.
HM Treasury
Stamp duty on property and land transactions below certain thresholds were reduced in deprived areas in the Finance Act 2001. Identification of these areas was based on the ID 2000 for England.
The Home Office invested £2.9 million in 2001-02 and £5.8 million in 2002-03 in a scheme to improve the security of local shops in deprived areas selected with reference to the ID 2000. Also, police grant (£3.9 billion in 2001-02) and probation area funding (£500 million in 2001-02) are allocated based upon formulas that take into account relative deprivation based upon the ID 2000.
The Ministry of Defence
Since 1999 the Ministry of Defence (MOD) has used the ID 2000, along with other measures of social conditions, to inform decisions about unit moves, site rationalisations and investments into new facilities. The MOD does not, however, allocate expenditure with sole reference to the ID 2000 or other measures of relative geographic deprivation. Nonetheless the MOD does sponsor a number of the activities in areas of high deprivation. The Skill Force programme which uses retired military instructors to provide vocational training to young people?has been implemented in 47 schools in 11 areas, all of which are in areas that are among the most deprived in the UK.
The Millennium Birth Cohort
This study, funded by the ESRC, intentionally over-sampled children born in disadvantaged areas. The supplementary Child Poverty Index from the ID 2000 was used to identify wards in England that were deprived on this measure.
The Educational Maintenance Allowance Pilots
The evaluation of the effectiveness of the EMA pilots is funded by the DfES. The study is following a sample of young people in the pilot areas (and controls) who may be eligible for EMAs. Data on young peoples' rates of staying on in education in their localities has been drawn from the ID 2000?s Education Domain data.
Frontiers of Performance in Local Government
This study of satisfaction with local services carried out by MORI in 2001/2002 demonstrated that while satisfaction levels might bear some relationship to quality of service, they could in fact be predicted quite well by using the IMD 2000. This finding constitutes a form of external validation for the IMD 2000, as the MORI study is based on an independent survey on local satisfaction.
Several non-governmental agencies and companies also make use of ID 2000 within their regeneration programmes. Many have strong ties to the government itself. Some examples include:
English Partnerships an agency created in May 1999 with the merger of the Commission for the New Towns (CNT) and the Urban Regeneration Agency was designated by John Prescott in July 2002 as a key delivery agency in the Government's 'sustainable communities' agenda to regenerate towns, cities and rural areas. English Partnerships has piloted several Urban Regeneration Companies and these make use of the ID 2000 to help inform their decisions.
Renaisi is 'an independent not for profit organisation specialising in the design and implementation of regeneration strategies and programmes'. It has several clients in London as well as Sheffield, Redbridge and Luton, and aims to target its regeneration schemes at the country's most deprived communities. The organisation develops detailed geographical information in order to help reveal deprivation and set regeneration priorities in particular areas. Chief amongst its sources of data is the ID 2000, whose results feature prominently on Renaisi?s website.
Bill and Melissa Gates Foundation
In October 1999 the Bill and Melissa Gates Foundation made available a gift of $4 million (£2.6 million) to the Library and Information Commission in the UK for the provision of information technology learning centres in public libraries in some of the most deprived communities in the UK. England received approximately £2.0 million and it was announced that the money would be allocated to local authorities based upon the ID 2000.
[1] Department of Health Compendium of Clinical and Health Indicators 2001 (2001) Edited by A. Lakhani and H. Olearnik.
[2] Chandola, T., Lloyd, M., Noble, M., Wigglesworth, R. and Wright, G. Rural Deprivation: An analysis of the Indices of Deprivation 2000 for rural areas (Countryside Agency, forthcoming).