The small area UK Armed Forces Veterans census data is now live in Local Insight. You can start using and analysing this data for all your custom areas. 

For guidance on using Census 2021 data in Local Insight please see “How to explore Census 2021 data in Local Insight”.

Summary of published data 

Download the list of indicators.

We have added 14 indicators to Local Insight. This release includes small area data from the UK Armed Forces Veterans topic summary. Indicators for the following datasets can now be seen live in Local Insight: 

• Household reference person indicator of previous service in UK armed forces (4 indicators) 
• Previously served in the UK armed forces (4 indicators) 
• Number of people in household who have previously served in UK armed forces (4 indicators) 
• Population who have previously served in UK armed forces in communal establishments and in households (2 indicators)

Data availability

Please note the smallest geography this data has been published at is MSOA level. 

This may have an impact on how you can view data for your custom areas.

Viewing data on the map

While the smallest geography that the data has been published at is MSOA level, we have used population weighted apportioning so that you are also able to view this data at LSOA level on the map. 

As we have used population weighted apportioning, this may mean that some component LSOAs of a parent MSOA will have slightly different data values and may be shaded a different colour on the choropleth map.

Viewing data for custom areas

As the data is published at MSOA level, it is more difficult to accurately apportion to custom areas that are built out of smaller building blocks. We use population weighted apportioning to generate data for your custom areas (read more about our apportioning methodology here). Please see below for guidance on how this works for different area types.

Areas larger than an MSOA, built out of MSOA or Local Authorities: We use the figures published by ONS to build areas out of MSOAs and Local Authorities.

Areas larger than an MSOA, built out of LSOAs or OAs: Some custom areas are larger than MSOAs but built out of smaller component areas (eg, areas that you create by drawing on a map or through importing shapefiles). For these, we use population weighted apportioning to derive a value for each of the LSOAs. 

As we round apportioned results to the nearest round numbers, there may be some small variances in data at a sub-MSOA level.

Areas smaller than an MSOA: As with the above, we use population weighted apportioning to derive values for areas smaller than MSOA level. 

As the data is only published at MSOA level, data values are based on estimates rather than exact figures and so should be used with caution.

Reports

UK Armed Forces Veterans data is not available to view within reports. For guidance on how best to view this data in Local Insight, please see “How to explore Census 2021 data in Local Insight”.

You can view Census 2021 indicators across Local Insight through Dashboards, Maps and Reports.

To make it easier to locate the new census indicators they all have (Census 2021) in their indicator titles. 

The Dashboard 

The easiest way to see Census 2021 indicators for your custom areas is by using the Dashboard.

1. Open the Dashboard tab
2. Click the Data icon 
3. Select Build a custom dashboard
4. Use the search bar to find the census indicator you want, for example, Pensioner living alone. Or type in the key search term Census 2021
5. You can select both the 2011 and 2021 timepoints (Not all the 2021 indicators have corresponding 2011 indicators as some questions were asked for the first time in the 2021 census)
6. Click on the ‘currently selected’ theme to see the indicators you have selected (this will also show you if they are assigned to a theme or not, which will be useful to know when it comes to adding indicators to the map)
7. When you are happy with your selection, click the blue Done button.

The Map

Not all Census 2021 indicators will be available on your map’s data menu by default. Many of the indicators will be in the unassigned theme. This means that they will need to be added to a theme by Group Admin users on the manage indicators page before they can be viewed on the map.

Additionally, depending on how your themes have been set up by your organisation, you may find that the indicators are somewhat spread around various themes.

We provide guidance below on where to look, but please get in touch with our support team if you are having trouble – we are happy to help.

The Census 2021 theme on the map

Back in June 2022 when the first round of census data was released, we created a theme for all our clients titled Census 2021. This contained the 25 headline usual resident population indicators (by sex and age). Originally ,this data was only published at local authority level and rounded to the nearest 100. 

ONS has published the small-area equivalents of:

• All people (Census 2021)
• All Males (Census 2021)
• All Females (Census 2021)

We have now updated these indicators in the Census 2021 theme with the more granular data, so that you can see the data at MSOA and LSOA level as well as for all custom areas. 

You can use this Census 2021 theme as you choose:

• Keep as is with key population indicators
• Remove Census 2021 theme and move the indicators to alternative themes
• Use the Census 2021 theme as your go-to theme for Census 2021 data to help your colleagues find data more easily.

Any changes to the Census 2021 theme need to be managed by a Group Admin, using the Manage Indicators functionality.

New indicators for Census 2021

Some indicators are  based on questions that were asked for the first time in Census 2021. For example, the indicator Married: Same-sex. These new indicators (that do not have 2011 counterparts) are not available on your Local Insight Map by default. Group Admin users can add these indicators to the maps using the Manage Indicators functionality.

Census 2021 indicators that have Census 2011 counterparts

If you already had an existing Census 2011 indicator displaying on your map, which has now been updated, it will be automatically replaced with the Census 2021 data. For example, the Pensioner living alone indicator.

Reports 

Some census indicators will also be updated and included in your Local Insight reports. We will inform you which indicators have been updated in reports as part of each data release.

You will need to update your reports to see the latest Census 2021 data after each release.

Compare Census 2011 and Census 2021 data in Local Insight 

You can compare Census 2021 indicators with their 2011 counterparts in Local Insight through the Dashboard and on the Maps.

View 2021 and 2011 data on the Maps 

When viewing an indicator on the map, click on the name and the corresponding 2011 indicator will show underneath it. 

Use the Data for your areas popup

The Data for your areas popup shows a table with the percentage and count data for the indicator you’ve selected for all your custom areas. When viewing the census indicators you can see 4 columns: percentage and count data for the 2021 and 2011 census timepoints. 

How to open the data for your areas popup?

• Click on the Data button to open the menu and click on the name of the dataset to view it on the map.
• Click on the Info button, in the top right hand corner
• Click Data for your areas to see the data for your custom areas

On the dashboard

Use the build a custom dashboard tool to select any of the 2021 and 2011 census indicators to view on your dashboard. 

Top tip: Use the search bar and type in 2011 or 2021 to filter for the relevant indicators.

Organise the new census data in your Local Insight Group

Group Admin users can add new indicators to the maps using the Manage Indicators option.

To do this:

1. Go to the Group admin tab and click Manage Indicators
2. Click on the theme titled unassigned located under the themes header 
3. Search for the census indicator by typing the indicator name or a keyword such as Census 2021.
4. Drag and drop the indicator into a theme 
5. Check the box underneath the map column to show that indicator on your groups map

Upcoming census releases 

ONS has a release calendar that is regularly updated to provide information on upcoming releases. Once ONS publishes the data, we aim to have data live within 3 working days. 

Sign up for a Local Insight census webinar

We will be running webinars on using census data in Local Insight (alongside our more general monthly refresher training). See Eventbrite for our upcoming webinar schedule.

The small area Demography and Migration census data is now live in Local Insight just two days after release by the The  Office of National Statistics (ONS). You can start using and analysing this data for all your custom areas. 

For guidance on using Census 2021 data in Local Insight please see “How to explore Census 2021 data in Local Insight”.

Summary of published data

Download the full list of indicators now available in Local Insight

We have updated or added 74 indicators to Local Insight. This release includes small area data from the Demography and Migration topic summary. 

Indicators for the following datasets can now be seen in Local Insight: 

• Resident age and sex (3 indicators)
• Household (1 indicator)
• Number of Usual Residents in Households and Communal Establishments (1 indicator)
• Legal Partnership Status (11 indicators)
• Household Composition (14 indicators)
• Households by Deprivation Dimensions (5 indicators)
• Country of Birth (11 indicators)
• Passports Held (17 indicators)
• Length of Residence (4 indicators)
• Age of Arrival in the UK (3 indicators)
• Migrant Indicator (4 indicators)

Reports

We have updated 26 of the indicators in the Local Insight report. You will need to update your reports in order to see Census 2021 data here.

Data includes:

• Country of birth / passports held (pg. 6)
• People who have moved addresses (pg. 7)
• Household composition (pg. 8)
• Household deprivation dimensions (pg. 22)

Sign up for a Local Insight census webinar

We will be running webinars on using Census 2021 data in Local Insight. Please see Eventbrite for our upcoming webinar schedule.

We are delighted to announce that the first 2021 census outputs are live and available in Local Insight. Read on to find out about:

• How many datasets are there?
• How do I find the new census data on Local Insight?
• Why are the datasets available at Local Authority level only?
• How do I compare census 2011 and 2021 data?
• Why is the census data not in the Local Insight reports?
• FAQs 

How many datasets are there?

In total, there are 63 new datasets on the tool with 25 being displayed automatically under the Data icon on your maps. The first outputs include:

• Usual resident population by sex
• Usual resident population by 5-year age group
• Usual resident population by sex and 5-year age group
• Usual resident population density

Download the full list of new datasets

How do I find the new census data on Local Insight?

We have created a new theme called Census 2021. In that new theme 25 of the new census datasets will appear (along with their 2011 counterparts). We have applied this to all groups, so you do not need to do anything in order to start using the census data straight away.

Those 38 other datasets not in the new default theme will be in the Unassigned theme.

• Group Admin users can add these new datasets to the maps using the Manage Indicators functionality.

• Remember, if you would like to see the indicators on the dashboard you can build custom dashboards and search for any indicator.

Why are the datasets available at Local Authority level only?

The datasets are published at Local Authority level only in this release. The ONS are indicating that small area level data will be published in Autumn. 

For the purpose of accuracy we have put in place measures to prevent this data showing for small areas. 

You cannot zoom below Local Authority level when viewing these datasets on Local Insight.

Usually, when viewing datasets on the map, you can zoom in and out and the geographic level at which you are viewing the data will automatically change. This is not the case for datasets published at Local Authority, the data will stay frozen at Local Authority level.

Any custom areas smaller than Local Authorities will not show any data.

When viewing these datasets on the dashboard and the data for more areas popup no data will show for custom areas that are smaller than Local Authorities. This includes, but is not limited to wards, MSOAs, LSOAs and parishes. This is because the datasets are only available at Local Authority level and so we cannot accurately  apportion data down to smaller geographies.

How do I compare census 2011 and 2021 data?

You can compare census 2021 datasets with their 2011 counterparts in Local Insight. This is possible when viewing those datasets on the maps and in the data for your areas popup. 

Viewing the data on the maps

Data for your areas popup

The data for your areas popup shows a table with the percentage and count data for all your custom areas. When viewing the census datasets you can see 4 columns: percentage and count data for the 2021 and 2011 census timepoints. 

Why is the census data not in the Local Insight reports?

New census data will only be available on the Maps and the Dashboard, as these initial outputs are only available at Local Authority level. Reports will be updated when census data at smaller geographies is released. 

Join a census webinar

Make sure you sign up here in order to join us on the 5th of July where we will run a census webinar. To stay up to date with all the webinars we run please follow us on Eventbrite. 

FAQs 

Below are some frequently asked questions we’ve already had. We will continue to add to this resource: 

Will the census data be available at Local Authority level initially and then small area data will be available later on? 

The ONS are indicating that small area data will be published in Autumn. When they publish this we will add it to the tool within days of publication. We are very excited for this release and will keep you updated regarding when the datasets will be available in Local Insight.

Why are there gaps on the Dashboard for some of my areas?

Datasets that are published at Local Authority level (like these initial census ones) will not show data for any custom areas thatinclude constituent regions smaller than Local Authority.

Do you know if Local Authority level data regarding ethnicity will be included within this first census release, or if it will be included in a later release?

Local Authority level data regarding ethnicity will not be released on the 28th June. However, we will be providing more information regarding the next releases, so ensure you keep a close eye on our updates

Get in touch!

If you have any questions or feedback then get in touch with us on support@ocsi.co.uk.

Did you know that there are some census 2021 datasets already available in Local Insight? This blog outlines; how to access that data, when you can expect to see the rest of the census data and how you will be able to compare 2011 and 2021 census data in Local Insight.

Go straight to

• Latest timeframes
• Census 2021 datasets already available in Local Insight
• Compare 2011 and 2021 census data in Local Insight 

Latest timeframes

Timeframes

The latest information is that the census outputs will start to be published early summer (June, we believe). Stay in the know on publication dates directly from the ONS.

Our intention is to have the datasets loaded into Local Insight within days of publication by the ONS.

Geographical changes

There will be changes to the census geographies (OAs, LSOAs and MSOAs). We will manage this in Local Insight for you and communicate how we are doing this. Rest assured, you will be able to see census 2011 and 2021 data for all geographies including the latest wards.

Census 2021 datasets already available in Local Insight

The ONS recently published some early census 2021 outputs. They published Country of birth by Local Authority for Ukraine and neighbouring or relevant countries to help local and national emergency planning in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

This data is now live in Local Insight. The full list of datasets available are:

• Born in Afghanistan
• Born in Belarus
• Born in Estonia
• Born in Hungary
• Born in Lithuania
• Born in Latvia
• Born in Moldova
• Born in Poland
• Born in Romania
• Born in Russia
• Born in Slovakia
• Born in Ukraine

These datasets are published at Local Authority level only. As data is not available at smaller geographies, there are measures in place to prevent this data from showing for small areas in Local Insight to avoid any confusion. This means that:

• You will not be able to zoom into MSOA or LSOA level when viewing these datasets on the map.
• Any custom areas that contain constituent regions smaller than Local Authority will not show data in the tables and dashboard. For example in figure 2 below, you can see that data is showing for the Local Authority custom areas but not for the wards.

Finding these datasets in Local Insight

These new datasets are not shown on your Local Insight Map by default.

• Group Admin users can add these datasets to the maps using the Manage Indicators functionality.
• Remember, if you would like to see the indicators on the dashboard you can build custom dashboards and search for any indicator. 

Compare 2011 and 2021 census datasets in Local Insight

You will be able to compare the census 2021 datasets with their 2011 counterparts in Local Insight. This will be possible in the data for your areas pop-up on the map and in the Local Insight reports.

Data for your areas popup

When viewing census datasets on the map, Local Insight will automatically update to show the latest 2021 census data. When you view data for your areas the table will show percentage and count data for all your custom areas for the 2021 census and the 2011 census questions. For example, see below how this table will look for the data related to those who selected Christian as their religion in the census.

Please note: This is a mocked up image. The data in this table is not representative of real data as the Christian 2021 data has not yet been published.

Local Insight reports

The Local Insight reports will contain charts and graphs where you can compare the 2021 census data with the 2011 census data for your chosen custom area.

New datasets

New questions were asked on the 2021 census on the following topics:

• Sexual orientation
• Gender Identity
• New Ethnic groups (Eritrean, Romanian and Showman populations)

There will be associated datasets for these topics in Local Insight.

More combined datasets

The ONS will have a dissemination tool where you will be able to combine indicators. For example, you will be able to see areas with high concentrations of young adults, with both low skills and high unemployment.

We will consult with users to identify the most important combinations and upload them onto Local Insight. 

Support for using the new census data

We will be running regular webinars throughout the summer to support all users in getting the most out of the census 2021 data. Follow us on Eventbrite to receive information about all the webinars we run. 

If you have any questions please contact us at support@ocsi.co.uk  

Census 2021 – Latest News

The release of the Census 2021 is the most eagerly awaited publication this year in the UK data world. The Census data will provide robust small area level data for a whole range of different themes. Here at Local Insight we are very excited for the release and cannot wait to support you to use the data in the tool.

Since the data will be published at small area level it can all be included in Local Insight. Data for themes such as ethnicity, where the data landscape has been sparase for many years, will be available in Local Insight. This is a high priority topic for organisations looking to understand the impact of the pandemic on minority groups. 

When is the Census 2021 data going to be available in Local Insight?

Our intention is to have the data sets loaded into Local Insight within one week of publication by the ONS. The table below summarises the provisional release timetable outlined by the ONS. A more detailed and accurate timetable will be published in March 2022, by the ONS. 

What does this mean for Local Insight?

All the data in Local Insight is published at small area level. Small area level includes postcode, Output Area, Lower layer super output area (LSOA) and Middle layer super output area (MSOA). The majority of the census outputs will be published at this small area level. However, the initial publications may be published at Local Authority (LA) level only. Local Insight does not contain LA level data because it cannot accurately apportion down to lower levels. Therefore, we will wait until the small area level data is published. If you have any concerns or questions about this please contact us on support@ocsi.co.uk. 

The ONS aims to stagger topic summary releases from Summer to Autumn of 2022.

The proposed theme order (informed by consultation responses):

• Demography and Migration

• Ethnic Group, National Identity, Language and Religion

• Health, Disability and Unpaid Care

• Housing

• Labour Market and Travel to Work

• Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity

• Education and Skills

• Armed Forces Veterans

This will then be followed in Autumn by the release of more detailed single (univariate tables) including data from new themes, multivariate data (combining two or more themes together e.g. health and ethnicity). Non-standard populations such as resident and workplace population, migration and commuting flows will follow next.

This will then be followed in Autumn by the release of more detailed single (univariate tables) including data from new themes, multivariate data (combining two or more themes together e.g. health and ethnicity). Non-standard populations such as resident and workplace population, migration and commuting flows will follow next.

New Census Data

There will be a range of new data on specific minority groups ranging from sexual orientation to new ethnic groups. These new data sets will be especially useful to those exploring equality, diversity and inclusion. The data sets will be available for you to access on Local Insight.

The following topics will have new data sets:

Gender Identity 

The ONS intend to investigate the feasibility of creating a detailed univariate table at Local Authority level that include for example: genderfluid, non-binary, trans man and trans woman. However, as they have yet to finalise this it is likely that any small area data will be merged in order to avoid disclosure. 

Sexual Orientation 

The ONS are planning to produce small area data on broad sexual orientation categories such as: straight or heterosexual, gay or lesbian, bisexual or other sexual orientation, not stated. 

UK Armed Forces Veterans 

The ONS will publish breakdowns at household level including: armed forces veterans, armed forces veteran status of household reference person, number of armed forces veterans in household.

New Ethnic Groups

The ONS will consider the feasibility of producing statistics on the Eritrean, Romanian and Showman populations. They may do this by including them within the detailed ethnic group classification or by creating bespoke small population tables for these groups.

More Housing Breakdowns

There will be a number of additional breakdowns relating to housing stock. The following new categories will be available:

• “a flat, maisonette or apartment: part of another converted building (for example, former school, church or warehouse)”
• Heating – “Mains gas” and “Tank or bottled gas”
• Heating – “Wood (for example, logs, waste wood or pellets)” and “Solid fuel (for example, coal)”
• Heating – “Renewable energy (for example, solar thermal or heat pumps)”, “District or communal heat network” and “Other”
• Unpaid Care – more broken down hours – 0-9, 10-19

The heating categories are likely to be of interest to groups exploring impacts of energy efficiency and fuel poverty. 

Support for using the new Census Data

The ONS are running a number of webinars to share their updated plans for the first phase of the Census 2021 release.You can register for their events here. 

We will also be running webinars regarding the Census 2021 data and you can follow us on eventbrite to receive information about all the webinars we run. 

If you have any questions please contact us at support@ocsi.co.uk 

The Local Insight support team will be off during the Christmas break from Monday the 20th of December to Monday the 3rd of January inclusive.

We will not be able to respond to any Local Insight support requests during this time.

We will answer emails when the office reopens on Tuesday the 4th of January.

Support

If you experience any issues or need support please visit  the Help Centre:  https://ocsihelp.zendesk.com/hc/en-us

There are also tutorial videos available to help you solve your questions: https://vimeo.com/user131023148

If you have another question which requires assistance from a member of the team please email support@ocsi.co.uk.  We will reply on Tuesday 4th of January.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

– The Local Insight Team 

You can now create more bespoke areas in Local Insight using the enhanced custom areas based on the postcodes functionality.

The 3 main improvements are…

1) You can now create custom areas based on any postcode within England, not just postcodes in your service list.

2) You can see the boundary line around your custom area so that it is clear where data for that area derives from.

3) Your postcodes are validated on import so you can be sure they are accurate.

Create custom areas based on any postcode

Historically you could only create custom areas from postcodes that were already uploaded in your group’s service list. This limited the areas that you could create. 

Now you can create custom areas from any postcode within England, regardless of whether those postcodes are in your service list.

Need to see data for a very small community?

• Create an area based on one or two local postcodes. 

Run a service accessed by thousands of people?

• Create an area by uploading the postcodes of the people who use your service. This allows you to create a non-contiguous area made up of potentially thousands of postcodes.

See the boundary line around your custom area

Previously, custom areas based on postcodes displayed as postcode markers on the map. Now the areas display with clear boundary lines around the constituent regions covered. Data is still created for these areas in the same way, more on that below, but now you can see a more accurate depiction of the area you have created on the map. 

The image on the left shows how postcode areas previously displayed on the map. The image on the right shows how the same postcode area now displays on the map.

How Local Insight calculates data for custom areas based on postcodes

Local Insight identifies all the Output Areas (OAs) covered by the uploaded postcodes and then calculates the data based on those component OAs. Local Insight then apportions data for that collection of OAs and their value is the value for your custom areas.

Not sure what Output Areas are? 

Output Areas (OA) are standard areas that were primarily designed for the publication of the Census. They are fairly homogeneous in terms of population size – ranging from 40 to 250 households. The number of postcodes per OA is always changing as new postcodes are added. There are roughly 11 postcodes per OA and no single postcode will cover multiple OAs.

Read more about how data is calculated for different area types.

Please note: Your existing areas created using postcodes have been updated to display in the new format. 

Some historic areas created based on service postcodes may no longer show anything on the map. This is because the service postcodes used to originally create the area were deleted from the service list. You will need to create these areas again. We can do this for you, if you email us on support@ocsi.co.uk with a list of the areas. Going forward this issue will no longer happen as the services feature has been decoupled from the postcode area feature.

Postcodes validated on import

When creating areas based on postcodes you can either paste in a list of postcodes or upload a CSV.

In both methods, Local Insight checks the postcodes to ensure that they are valid. If there are invalid postcodes (e.g typos, postcodes from other countries), you will see an error message detailing the rows that have invalid postcodes. You can then go back edit those postcodes and reupload.

Reminder of how to create custom areas…

To create a custom area you must have Power User or Group Admin access.

Read our Help Centre article on how to create custom areas based on postcodes.

Get in touch!

If you have any questions or feedback then get in touch with us on support@ocsi.co.uk or call us 01273 810270.

In Local Insight, you can explore how unemployment has evolved over the past year for all your custom areas. You can download this trend data for any area using the dashboard. This article provides a step-by-step of how to do that. 

Background

The unemployment benefit (JSA and Universal credit) indicator, often referred to as the ‘claimant count’, is published at LSOA level every month by The Department of Work and Pensions. In turn, Local Insight is updated to include the latest monthly snapshot. 

Since March 2020, rather than overwriting the previous timepoint, we have been adding each monthly snapshot as a new indicator. As a result, you can look at the month on month changes from March 2020 up to the latest published data (March 2021 at the time of writing this article).

Youth unemployment

You can also view the monthly data for youth unemployment (aged 18-24). This indicator shows the proportion of people aged 18-24 receiving Jobseekers Allowance (JSA) or Universal Credit for those who are out of work (in the ‘searching for work’ conditionality group) aged 18-24 (as a % of all 18-24 year olds).

Use the dashboard to download the month on month data for your custom areas

Follow these steps to build a dashboard displaying the individual unemployment claimant count datasets for each month for your areas. 

1. Open the Dashboard tab 
2. Use the Areas button to select the areas you would like to display
3. Click on the Data button and select build a custom dashboard 
4. In the search bar type Unemployment benefit (JSA and Universal Credit) or Youth unemployment (18-24 receiving JSA or Universal Credit)
5. On the right hand side it will now display all the different timepoints
6. Select the timepoints in the order in which you want them to display 
7. Click Done

Once you have created your dashboard, you can either view it on Local Insight or export it to Excel. 

You can also copy and paste the dashboard into Excel and keep the colour scale. 

Create a chart in Excel to show how the data has changed over time

Once you have exported the raw data from the Dashboard, you can then import it into other data visualisation tools such as Power Bi or create charts and graphs directly in Excel.

Round up decimals

Firstly, you may want to round up decimals. You can use the shortcut option here on the Home tab under the ‘Number’ section circled below. These two options allow you to either increase/decrease the decimal places displayed. 

Line chart for time-series data

To visualise the data, a line chart is the most effective way to display changes over time. You can create a line chart in Excel to show the Unemployment time-series data for each of your areas.

Creating a line chart

• Select the cells from your dashboard export that you want to include in the chart (it is best to do this for a small number of areas/comparators as the chart will look crowded otherwise).
• Go to the Insert tab and locate the options for Charts, click on Recommended Charts, this will bring up the charts Excel recommends as appropriate, in this case, it’s a line chart which is the most effective way to display time-series data. Click OK to create the chart.

• You can format the chart however you like by selecting the chart and bringing up the Formatting sidebar – use this to give the chart a title, change the colour, axes display, and much more.
• You can paste the chart into a document as an image, copy the chart and paste, and on paste options, there is an option for ‘Picture’ that pastes it as an image.

Please note, currently when you export the Dashboard the national comparator data is not in the CSV. To add it in, you can copy and paste it directly from the dashboard. 

Metadata

When exporting data from Local Insight to use in other reports we would always recommend taking the metadata too. Metadata is contextual information about the dataset covering; the methodology, the time period the data relates to, the update frequency and the publisher. 

To see the metadata for a dataset on the Dashboard click on the dataset name. 

View the unemployment trend data on the map

You can view each monthly snapshot of the unemployment data on the map.

1. Navigate to the map page
2. Click on the Data button
3. Search Unemployment using the search bar
4. You will see the most recent Unemployment benefit (JSA and Universal credit) indicator for the month of March 2021 and the 11 historic timepoints listed beneath

View the count data alongside the percentage figures 

When you view a dataset on the map you can see the count data within the data for more areas popup. To view and download the count data you can do the following: 

1. Click on the Data button on the map page 
2. Locate the indicator you are after by searching Unemployment benefit (JSA and Universal credit)
3. Select to view the dataset on the map
4. Click on the Info button in the top right corner
5. Click on the Data for your areas button 
6. Click Download this dataset in CSV format

This will open up a data table containing all the percentage data in the first column and the count data in the second column. 

Reports

In the reports you can see how the data has changed over a much longer time period (2004 to 2021) in charts (page 10).

Local unemployment data is useful for…

The unemployment benefit data gives the most comprehensive figures at a local level of those that are currently unemployed. You can explore the raw LSOA data from The Department of Work and Pensions but in Local Insight you can see the data aggregated for any area that you create in the tool.  

Read more about different measures of unemployment and how the data should and shouldn’t be used. 

Want more time-series data in Local Insight?

We are looking at options to include more time-series data within Local Insight. Please email support@ocsi.co.uk with any suggestions.

The Local Insight Help Centre has had a makeover. It is now easier to find the information and support materials you need to help you get the most out of Local Insight. 

You can access the Help Centre from the Support tab at the top of Local Insight. 

What’s new?

Alongside aesthetic improvements we have added some new features:

• Getting started video series  
• New articles
• Webinar programme 
• User permission information 

Getting started video series

The video selection can be found in the carousel at the bottom of the Help Centre. The videos are short demonstrations of how to do some of the basics in Local Insight. This is a useful resource for people who are new to Local Insight at your organisation.

Currently, there are videos on: 

• Viewing data on the map
• Understanding the dashboard 
• Building custom dashboards
• Create custom areas based on standard areas
• Create custom areas based on service postcodes
• Create custom areas by drawing on the map

If you have any suggestions for more videos let us know on support@ocsi.co.uk 

New articles

We have added lots of new articles. This includes in depth articles on the data processes and mechanics that underpin Local Insight in the new Data and geographies category.

There is also a new section on how data is calculated for different custom areas. This is a question we get asked a lot and so, we wanted to publish the information so that everyone can understand how custom areas are defined. Find these articles under the Areas category.

Webinar programme 

We run monthly webinars that are open to all users of Local Insight. You can sign up through the Webinars tab found at the bottom of the Help Centre page.

This will redirect you to the Local Insight Eventbrite page that lists all the upcoming webinars. 

User permission information 

Not every user has access to all the features in Local Insight. There are 3 different levels of access permission. To help you understand the features you can and cannot access, there are now user permission notes at the top of relevant articles.

There is also an article that shows you how to understand the user permission level you have. 

Get in touch

The Help Centre is a great place to look if you have a question about Local Insight. However, you can still contact us on support@ocsi.co.uk if you need help. 

We are always looking to improve Local Insight and the support materials. So any feedback on the tool or article suggestions are welcome!