Appendix 1
Response from Peter Haley, Economic Development
Officer, Chester City Council
B) how successful the official measures are at representing
the spatial disparity in UK unemployment;
To reinforce the comments made in my previous letter,
official measures are extremely poor at showing spatial disparity
at small but nevertheless meaningful levels of unemployment. Information
is needed at ward level but that as far as possible, wards should
cover communities in a discrete, integral manner. For example
Chester has revised its ward boundaries as a significant area
of deprivation was "hidden" within two highly affluent
wards, this has now been revised to create a specific ward. It
is unrealistic to produce information at the next level of Enumeration
District.
There is a problem with the Labour Force Survey where
the use of denominators in the unemployment statistics are based
upon population figures from the '91 Census. This undermines the
reality on which these statistics are based upon, use of mid-census
estimates would greatly alleviate this problem.
Travel to Work Areas (TTWAs) are not useful for Local
Authorities and felt to be a waste of resources. This is high-lighted
in their being co-terminous, (allowing direct comparisons to be
made), however for each TTWA there are significant inclusions
and exclusions. If they had overlapping boundaries to ensure a
realistic area is defined then this makes comparisons difficult.
This fact, the general need for data at a lower level and the
long interval for TTWA figures being published leads to the conclusion
that there is no point to publishing TTWA-based figures.
Although information is available from the New Deal,
there is little dis-aggregated to a level lower than district.
D) the extent of local, national and European sponsored
initiatives aimed at creating a better balance between the supply
and demand for jobs at the local level whether these are sufficient;
Local to Chester, the only policies that apply are
ESF Objective 3, New Deal and two SRB programmes. There are a
number of other initiatives promoted in England tackling employability
and employment to which Chester as a district is not eligible.
A number of local communities within the district would probably
be accepted.
Chester City Council has recently undertaken a Strategic
Review of its SRB programmes to assess the impact they have had
on local communities. The report encountered severe difficulties
in gathering information at ward level due to either the data
not existing or it being very difficult to obtain at this level.
A copy of this report will be sent directly to the Education &
Employment Committee once it is available.
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