Kent County Council was shortlisted in the Digital Impact category at the LGC Awards 2022. Their work collaborating with district councils using administrative data to tackle poverty was applauded by the judges, who said:
“Great to see joint leadership from a county and district councils on tackling poverty. A fantastic use of the Policy in Practice insights platform”
In a first for local government Kent County Council and district councils collaborated by sharing data insights to answer these challenges. This approach is helping councils to proactively identify people eligible for support sooner.
Kent County Council’s good news story of 2022
The Low-Income Family Tracker was a no-brainer because we knew that what we could do with it would be far more longer term and sustainable than just something that was an immediate reaction to the pandemic.
Zena Cooke, Director of Corporate Finance, Kent County Council
Learn more about Kent County Council’s good news story
Kent County Council, together with 12 district councils, supports 1.6 million residents.
The pandemic pushed financially vulnerable residents into further hardship at the same time that council budgets came under more pressure due to extra costs.
This meant there were two core groups of residents that we were eager to identify, engage and support:
- Vulnerable residents already known to the councils
- Residents not known to the councils who had been affected by the restrictions on the economy, such as the newly unemployed
Between the county and the 12 districts, all administrative data existed on separate systems, with revenues and benefits, council tax and rent arrears data stored separately. This meant that proactively identifying those who needed support across the county was a monumental task.
Knowing that the financial situation for our residents was particularly unstable at that time, Kent county and district councils boldly chose to collaboratively share data to get powerful cross-county insights to drive poverty prevention activity. In practice, this involved the district councils sharing their administrative data with Policy in Practice, for use in a new Living Standards Index (LSI) built specifically for Kent.
The LSI-Kent platform allows those with upper-tier oversight to see changes at a district level and target support accordingly. Users can track Council Tax support spend across all districts, compare caseloads and see benchmarks to assess local demand. They can drill right down to household level to accurately target support.
Importantly, the project has transparency built-in so that councils can very easily benchmark with each other to identify and share best practices in a safe, collaborative way.
Better use of data has led to effective preventative poverty campaigns:
- £1,232,898 of extra income distributed to Kent residents so far
- 50 current active campaigns with 25 completed in 2021-22
- Outcomes show how county and district councils can work collaboratively with data to benefit residents and reduce future costs to the council
The data-driven campaigns are helping to target a wide range of support to vulnerable residents across free school meal take-up, employment support, public health interventions, housing initiatives and welfare benefits.
The benefits are felt internally too. Learning between county and district is key, with bi-monthly strategic meetings in place to share best practice. Objectives are also reviewed monthly in order to align with local needs.
£
0
extra income distributed to Kent residents
0
campaigns completed in 2021-22
Districts have the data, knowledge and expertise. County has size and scale. We had to combine the best of us to come up with something that’s going to help many in a positive way.
Zena Cooke, Director of Corporate Finance, Kent County Council