Examination of Witnesses (Questions 180-199)
DAME MAVIS
MCDONALD
DCB, MR PETER
UNWIN AND
MR NEIL
KINGHAN
12 OCTOBER 2004
Q180 Chairman: Do you think that was
fair to all the groups outside who wanted to come up with contracts
with you on the survey, to compete in some areas and to cooperate
in others?
Mr Unwin: Clearly we would have
preferred to have come out much earlier, in line with our original
expectation, but I think what is fair is that we have come out
with something that is considered and now gives those groups clarity.
Q181 Chairman: Has it been well received?
Mr Unwin: Certainly the correspondence
we have had has in some cases sought clarification but has generally
welcomed the fact that it has come out, albeit late, and has not
seen any problems with the major issues that have come out of
it.
Q182 Christine Russell: Could I ask you
about the funding for ENCAMS. I have always thought ODPM were
the principal funders for ENCAMS, yet there is no mention in the
report. Do you fund those?
Mr Unwin: No.
Dame Mavis McDonald: Defra fund
ENCAMS.
Q183 Christine Russell: As far as you
are aware, did your Department have any input whatsoever into
their chewing gum campaign?
Mr Unwin: We work closely with
Defra across "liveability", and obviously ENCAMS is
extremely relevant to that, so we have close links with them across
a whole range of liveability issues.
Q184 Chairman: They have been a spectacular
failure, have they not? We have been going on about keeping Britain
tidy for 50 years and I cannot see any reduction in the litter
in most local authority areas.
Dame Mavis McDonald: I honestly
do not think we are competent to talk about "Keep Britain
Tidy" and ENCAMS, because we do not really have the sponsorship
role. On your more general point, that is one of the reasons behind
our PSA on liveability, which is about improving the management
of the public realm, and we have a kind of cross-cutting lead
across Whitehall on that PSA.
Q185 Chairman: You have a cross-cutting
lead on trying to reduce the amount of litter in public spaces
but another department puts up the money for it.
Dame Mavis McDonald: The PSA on
liveability is a new one for the next spending review. We have
been involved, in terms of pulling together across Whitehall,
in some of the thinking on the agenda that is described as "liveability"
but it includes things like anti-social behaviour as well as physical
environmental hazards like chewing gum and graffiti and litter.
Q186 Mr Betts: We were talking earlier
about the Neighbourhood Renewal Fund continuing, and clearly it
has been of benefit to quite a lot of deprived areas where you
are able to identify which areas are deprived. That is dead easy
where there is a large area of deprivation, but we all know that
there are small pockets within slightly more affluent or more
average wards. The Office of National Statistics has been promising
for some time to give us more accurate data about these smaller
areas, so we can pick these issues up and get something targeted
to them as well. Where are we up to?
Dame Mavis McDonald: The new Index
of Multiple Deprivation Analysis that we published earlier this
year is based on something called "small areas", which
are a new capacity that the Office of National Statistics has
had using the geographic information database to get below ward
level. The maps that we publish there actually do highlight more
clearly some of those small pockets within more affluent areas
rather than just the big concentrations at local authority and
ward area.
Q187 Mr Betts: Is all the work finished
on that now?
Dame Mavis McDonald: I think there
is a lot of work to do to populate some of these "small areas"
with statistics, but the work that was done for us using that
as the underpinning in itself is complete. We have published the
new index.
Q188 Mr Betts: I do not quite understand
that.
Dame Mavis McDonald: The small
output area has lots of uses and we have, in the Index of Multiple
Deprivation, been the first user of that underpinning tool to
fine-tune existing data. The Index of Multiple Deprivation has
been running for some time but in the latest version, published
earlier this year, the map looks rather different because it is
not based just on local authority ward areas but is based on a
fine-tuned definition which goes below ward level, and the map
is more sensitive in terms of picking out areas of relative deprivation
in wealthier local authorities.
Q189 Mr Betts: What more can we do to
be more precise about targeting the funding that is available?
Dame Mavis McDonald: You could
graphically read it off basically. The question is what do you
do with it when you have got it? Do you use it to distribute money
differently against different kinds of criteria?
Q190 Mr Betts: As regards the data, there
is nothing more to be done. That is all done now, is it?
Dame Mavis McDonald: For the Index
of Multiple Deprivation? To the best of my knowledge the ONS are
still looking at the capacity of that "small area" unit
to be populated with other data and they have not necessarily
finished all that work.
Q191 Mr Betts: Do we have a time scale
there?
Dame Mavis McDonald: No. We can
ask them for an update.
Q192 Mr Betts: I think there is a real
sense of grievance around, that these areas miss out on every
single grant going. Even though they have extreme poverty, that
is lost amongst the more affluent areas.
Dame Mavis McDonald: If you have
not seen it, we can let you have the material on the Index of
Multiple Deprivation itself and the maps that go with that which
do show this quite clearly.
Q193 Chairman: You are going to start
allocating a bit more money on the basis of this information.
Dame Mavis McDonald: I have already
said, Ministers have not made any decisions yet about how they
will or will not make use of it.
Q194 Chairman: In Manchester, there was
very clear concern that the 2001 census was, shall we say, politely,
a "bit of a shambles". It was not much better in Sheffield.
How do we know that the information that was collected from that
census, when it goes down into these small neighbourhoods, is
actually going to be accurate?
Dame Mavis McDonald: I do not
think we can know that the data they collected in the census is
going to be accurate within those small neighbourhoods. Neil can
talk about the work that ONS have done to revisit those populations'
statistics.
Q195 Chairman: In revisiting those statistics,
how far is the revised figure going to go into this "small
area" information or how far is the original figure going
to go in? Because it is obviously quite crucial if you think that
the population of Manchester was underestimated by 25,000 people.
That means that almost all the "small area" within Manchester
is going to be short of a certain number of people, and the fact
that it is short of those people is going to make a considerable
difference to the deprivation in that area.
Dame Mavis McDonald: Could I ask
Neil to explain to you what the ONS did when they published the
revised population data and then I think we need to ask them to
tell you how they will use the revised population data in the
"small areas".
Q196 Chairman: I am not interested in
how they use it; I am interested in the way in which you will
be using it or the Ministers will decide to use it in allocating
resources. Because if those figures were suspect, you are still
going to be allocating money to neighbourhoods on the basis of
dodgy information.
Mr Kinghan: I could say that we
will use the new figures in the Revenue Support Grant calculations.
I know that is not the point you have raised and I do not know
how far they have been—
Q197 Chairman: I can understand that
that satisfied people like Manchester or Kensington and Chelsea,
that those figures are finding their way through there, but if,
as people have been arguing for some time, "small area"
information should have an influence, it is very important that
that "small area" information is accurate, otherwise
you are going to be dishing money out on false information.
Dame Mavis McDonald: If I could
go back to the answer I have given before, I honestly do not know
whether the ONS have populated the "small areas" with
the updated population data or whether indeed they have populated
it with detailed population data. For the Index of Multiple Deprivation
we use a set of other indicators which are about things like crime
levels, educational attainment—the kind of things we are
measuring in the floor targets—and there were one or two
changes, but those are the kind of indicators that have been consistently
used in all our Indices of Multiple Deprivation over time.
Q198 Chairman: Perhaps you could give
us a note on that.
Dame Mavis McDonald: Yes, we can
certainly do that.
Q199 Mr O'Brien: Considering the report
of last year, this Committee made some observations as to the
failure to deliver on commitments to reform the planning system
by issuing revised guidance notes, which had led to some uncertainty
and delay in planning decisions. Could you give us a timetable
of the revisions to the Policy and Planning Guidance?
Dame Mavis McDonald: I believe
the position is still as the minister announced to the House earlier
this year when he explained that there was going to be a revision
to the programme because of the priority Ministers wanted to give
to the roll out of the new Local Development Framework System.
He made a ministerial statement on 17 June which gave that revised
timetable. I can read it out if you would like, but we can make
sure you have that.
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