Alongside keeping Local Insight up to date with the latest data, we have also added some brand new indicators! One of the new indicators provides new insight into looking at well-being among older people. This indicator created and released by Age UK  rates the probability of loneliness for older people. See below for a full list of all the new indicators available to you on Local Insight.

Brand new indicators  

Check out for the following new indicators:

• Probability of loneliness for those aged 65 and over (Age UK)

• Universal Credit (Department for Work and Pensions)

• Dwelling stock build information. This new dataset shows the number of dwellings in the local area that were built during certain time periods. The indicator is broken down into decades and covers dwellings built throughout the 20th and 21st century (Valuation Office Agency)

• Road accident causality rate (Department for Transport)

How to view these new indicators 

If your organisation has not yet started using the Manage Indicators function, the Probability of loneliness and the Universal credit indicators will be displayed in the Vulnerable groups theme. The Dwelling stock build data and the Road accident causality rate can be found in the Unassigned theme on the Manage Indicators page. To find out more about using indicators, check out this section in our Knowledge Base

If your organisation does use the Manage Indicators function, all of the new indicators will be available in the Unassigned theme. To view these new indicators on the map, you must go to the Manage Indicators page and move the indicator into a theme. For guidance on how to do this check out this short video.

Data updates to existing indicators 

Alongside the new indicators, we have also updated a number of key indicators within Local Insight.

The Department for Work and Pensions released its latest data on unemployment benefits this week and we have it up and live on Local Insight! This data covers the period of June 2016 and provides breakdowns into gender, youth unemployment and long term unemployment. Alongside this update, the following indicators have been updated:

• Neighbourhood level police data, covering indicators such as:
  • Anti social behaviour
  • Vehicle crime
  • Burglary
  • Robbery

• Local business data covering a range of different topics such as:
  • Number of employees employed by a company (Indicator called “VAT based local units employing XYZ people”)
  • Local businesses broken down into different sectors
  • Local businesses categorised as either public, private or government organised.
  • To find these indicators search the Unassigned theme for the following phrases “business”, “VAT”, “local units”.

• Travel time data to key services (Department for Transport). This data covers travel time to:
  • Employment centres
  • Futher Education institutes
  • GPs
  • Hospitals
  • Schools
  • Supermarkets
  • Town centres

• Number of Dwellings by Council Tax band for 2015 (Valuation Office Agency)

We are always looking to add new and useful indicators to Local Insight, so if you have any suggestions for indicators you would like to see let us know at support@ocsi.co.uk

Whether you are a Local Insight old timer, or have recently become a subscriber, there are plenty of ways to use the tool that you may not have tried out yet.

1. Upload local survey data through ‘upload your data’ tool
Have you carried out any surveys with residents in your area recently? Want an easy way to visualise the responses? With the Upload your Data tool you can import and view on the maps your own organisational postcode level data, as well as generating values for all of your custom areas. Some organisations are using this to visualise responses from residential surveys regarding physical activity, smoking and fuel poverty.

Have you got some data you want to upload, but not sure how to go about it? Contact us at OCSI, we will be more than happy to discuss and walk you through it.

2. Change your comparators for your reports and get a different insight into how you are doing
We’re sure you are already well acquainted with the reports in Local Insight. But have you used the ‘define your own comparators’ feature? Within the reports you will have noticed data visualisations and charts comparing your custom area to two other areas. You have the ability to choose exactly what these other areas are. Because we are so good to you, you can choose from national and regional comparators, counties, local authorities and your own custom areas. This can be really useful to benchmark to nearest neighbours. As you can do this at a click of a button, you can run and re-run reports with a number of different comparators. .

This gives you even more flexibility in seeing how your own areas fare against others; giving you that extra insight into the communities you are working with.

Find out more about using this feature in the Knowledge Base.

3. Choose which indicators appear in your maps and dashboards
Local Insight can be customised in many ways to suit the needs of your organisation. One of the most handy features is the ability to choose which indicators appear on the maps and dashboard. With more than 700 indicators to select from, you may not want all of these displaying on the maps at once – so why not just choose the ones most relevant to your organisation? Some Local Insight users have re-organised the way that data appears on their maps according to their strategic aims.

This is also really useful for building temporary, project specific dashboards. For example, if you are working on a mental health project; simply select all the relevant indicators to display in the dashboard. You can then export or copy and paste this into an Excel document to carry out further analysis.

Finally, if you also have a public facing version of the tool – remember you can choose which indicators appear on the public facing map independently to those that are displayed on the logged in site. Some organisations display a reduced set of indicators on the public facing site to ensure that users are not overwhelmed.

There is more information on managing your indicators over on the Knowledge Base.

4. Organisation function
Does your organisation form part of a larger group? If so, you may want to give the ‘organisation’ function a try.

The organisation function works in a similar way (although independently) to service types. When you upload your stock, you can add another column for organisation. You can then toggle on and off which services are displayed on a map, in the same way you can for service types.

For large groups made up of several small organisations, this is a really useful way to be able to get an overview of the location of services  for the whole group, as well as to get a breakdown for each smaller organisation. For example, if you are a County Council, you may want to categorise your services based upon Districts within the county.

This is not switched on by default, so get in touch with us at OCSI if you want to give it a whirl.

5. Change the colour scheme for maps and dashboards
Visualising data on the maps is a key feature of Local Insight. You can change the colour scheme of the maps at a click of a button. Perhaps change it to fit with your organisational branding? Or change it to be more accessible for colour-blind users?

Take a look at the Knowledge Base to find out how to customise your colours.

Get in touch!
Have you got any more tips and tricks for your fellow Local Insight subscribers? Are you already using these features and got some stories to share? Want to start using these features but not sure where to begin? Get in touch with us at OCSI – we would love to hear from you.

We will also be running support webinars & creating video content for Local Insight subscribers in the coming months. Drop us a line and let us know which topics you would like us to cover.