Improving policymaking with city-region statistics

George Osborne’s ‘Northern Powerhouse’ speech in November 2014 marked the beginning of a dramatic devolution of powers, funding and policymaking responsibility away from Whitehall to city-regions, such as Greater Manchester, Sheffield and the West Midlands.

As more and more decisions around economic development, infrastructure, skills, health and welfare are made at the city-region level, so greater understanding of the particular economic, social, and cultural circumstances of individual city-region areas is needed. To improve the quality of policymaking and outcomes, accurate and timely data at the appropriate spatial level will become ever more important.  If such data are not available, policy design and evaluation at the city-region level will fail to fulfil the potential to improve health and prosperity that devolution offers.

To help improve the production and use of city-region statistics as greater powers and funding are devolved to mayors, Centre for Cities and the UK Statistics Authority organised a workshop for city practitioners, academics and data users and producers of official statistics to explore how they can best work together to identify potential priorities for further work.

In partnership with