Before you start down on the CDRC arts from now on as you may not be familiar with us It was one of the reasons why the CDRC was set up, that consumer data research centre in Was to provide consumer data to researchers This data had been previously inaccessible to industry researchers So the CDRC was established to lead the academic engagement between industry and social sciences ac i gyrsio'r gweithio o dysgu ymgyrch, mae hynny wedi gwerthu unig i gyrsio'r range o rhan o ysgwetio ac i gyrsio'r range o'r gyrsio yn gyflaeniadig i gydolfrannodau a rhan o gymtro. Bydd ymweld o wybodd yn hwnny o'r differentlyrwys i ysgwetiaid. Mae have six-core research themes at ZDRC, yn ymmerin rhan o'r blaen ei gyrsio'r linell yn gweld. Ac y sobodaeth ar y gêl axe yw gweld ymweld mae gyrsio'rLDA i gyrsio'r %. can solve research questions across a variety of disciplines thinking a bit about our CDRC partners then so where we get our data from typically comes from industry partners in the public sector and in this way we're able to help tackle those real world problems that we set out to tackle and it also means that in that way we work across interdisciplinary and sectoral boundaries as well so that's my introduction from the CDRC you'll hear a bit more about from me at the end of this presentation but now I'm going to hand over to Fran to talk about the methodology behind priority places thank you Emily so um I'll be talking to you about the methods and the underlying data that goes into the tool and then people go on to demo the tool for you all and so the priority places for food index was developed alongside which um the work we've started collaborating only a few months ago um and what we wanted to do is wanted to identify the places and people most at risk of food insecurity this winter so the index has a lot of data underlying it um and these fall into seven domains um and they provide insight at small um aerodrographies um so in the UK this is approximately 650 households make up one neighbourhood or a small aerodrography um it brings into into the index not only information about access to food but also economic barriers to food so those first four sort of domains of the index cover the kind of access physical access to food and the second or the final three kind of encompass economic barriers um to affordable food so um moving on to the next slide please Pete um I'll talk to you through a bit more of the domains in detail so the first four three of our domains actually come from the EU food desert index so this is developed in 2019 by researchers at CDRC to capture access to groceries and retail um so you may have come across the term food desert before so this is when um people are unable to access food from a supermarket um and this index was created to encompass both physical and online access so um to encompass proximity to supermarket retail facilities we've taken um supermarket location point data from geoletics they make this openly available and we've calculated both the distance from each postcode to the nearest store and also the number of stores within one kilometre of a postcode and then we've averaged that out for those small area neighbourhoods we've also looked at accessibility to supermarket retail facilities um so we've looked at um public transport distance um using key journey time statistics from um the survey of England and Wales and a spatial interaction model so looks at how long for um someone would have to travel using public transport to get to their local supermarket um also included in the EU food desert index it is access to online deliveries so given the pandemic um especially there's been a huge increase in the uptake of online delivery services for supermarket food so um we web scrape the EU food desert index web scrape data from the major supermarkets calculating for each small area neighbourhood how many supermarkets delivered to that neighbourhood and then we also combine this with the internet use of classification so this brings into the propensity to actually use online deliveries so um neighbourhoods are classified into one of these domains from e-cultured curators and e-professionals so those really likely to shop online to kind of e-withdraw on and settled offline communities so those are kind of quite unlikely to participate in or use online delivery services to build on the e-food desert index we also want to capture proximity to non food supermarket provision so often the cheapest food can actually be found elsewhere outside the supermarket so to do this we used um two additional open data sources the food standards agency data of non supermarket food provision locations um so this is actually the same data that underlines where they how get their food hygiene rating as well so you can work out the hygiene rating but also the location of those stores so we use that underlying data again to calculate how many of those non supermarket food permissions were available within a one kilometre radius and we also looked at the national market traders federation database of markets places and calculated the distance to the nearest markets they're going to open markets um where food especially food and vegetables are often cheaper to purchase um we then wanted to capture say maybe on the next slide please Pete these kind of economic barriers to um food so first of all um we looked at kind of kind of core socioeconomic barriers so from this we took the um measure of income from the index model for deprivation which is calculated separately for each of the devolved nations and we also combine this with car access so we've used this domain to capture difficulty in being able to travel to um kind of maybe travel a bit further to get that cheap affordable food the next domain i think is one of the most important in my opinion is a food support or family food for support domain so this captures those extra demand for food support so areas which are already struggling and need that extra support so this includes um for each neighbourhood free school meal entitlements say the number of children entitled for free school meals within that area and also uptake of healthy start vouchers so healthy start vouchers are available to um pregnant women and children under the age of four in um the most deprived areas um and they can be using supermarkets to purchase milk products and offering vegetables to kind of supplement their shop and kind of contribute towards that cost the idea of um helping to get a healthy diet um also within this food support domain we include distance to nearest food bank which has been calculated the same way that i've described before as a way to supermarket proximity finally we're conscious that this winter um fuel poverty is also going to be a significant burden on the kind of household budget um and with the um energy price cab and kind of constantly changing energy situation so we used um devolved government calculated statistics for estimating fuel poverty so these use regression models that take into consideration energy prices income and energy efficiency data to estimate fuel poverty and we also included a measure of prevalence of prepayment meters within those neighbourhoods so um these prepayment meters often fletch both the higher costs of fuel that needs to be paid and greater heating insecurity so now i'll pass over to Pete who'll kind of explain how those have all been combined into the index thank you Fran um so the seven domains that Fran has has just run through are all combined into a single composite or combined index uh when we do this we we follow the methods of a of a couple of previous examples of building these composite domains um such as building out the index for multiple deprivation or the CDRC's own access to healthy assets and and hazards index so to build the overall index we first take each of the indicator level data within each of the domains we rank standardize and normalize the data before combining the indicators into their respective domains we then combine the domains via a transformation of the data which minimizes what's known as as cancellation effects across the domains so what this means is that a low score in one domain doesn't cancel out with a high score in another domain for a given neighbourhood instead all of the domains can contribute to indicating a a high priority place so the domains are then weighted according to the percentages shown in this slide these were chosen to balance the the effects of domains that measure sources of food for example where food stores might be located and the accessibility of to those food stores which correspond to the top four domains showing on this slide and we also wanted to balance that against the domains that measure the inability or the struggle for neighbourhoods to actually access those foods so the bottom three on this slide which reflects more the the socioeconomic status of of the different neighbourhoods more information about the the indicator data the domains and the index construction can be found in the priority places technical report which is available at the link shown at the bottom of this slide so moving on then i'm going to switch to a browser window and then this is a tool that we developed as part of this project to support dissemination of the index amongst decision makers so this online map can be viewed at priority places for food.witch.co.uk and is publicly accessible to to anyone that wants to look at it within this map we're displaying the decile that each neighbourhood falls into according to the index so each decile represents a different 10% increment of ranked neighbourhoods according to the index so decile number one represents those neighbourhoods nationally within the top 10% according to the index so upon loading the the map is centred on leads and consists of only dark blue points representing the highest priority decile so the map window can be explored as as you would any online map you can drag your mouse around and and zoom in and out and then by hovering over any of the points that represent the neighbourhoods we get a little bit more information as to how that neighbourhood fares across each of the domains that are contained within the index so for example with this neighbourhood which is on the east side of Bradford we see that this this neighbourhood is is in the highest priority domain according to the the overall index but it's not in the highest priority for each of the separate domains that contribute to the index so for proximity and accessibility to supermarkets it's in uh decile six uh for proximity to non-supermarket food provision it's actually one of the lowest priority decile areas with with a score of nine so on the other hand the access to online deliveries the socio demographic barriers food support for families and the fuel poverty domains are all at the higher priority end of the index and and it's those domains that contribute to to the overall index school for this particular location so this example here can be compared against a more rural neighbourhood um such as this one over here in in Suffolk so again this is also considered a priority place according to the index it's in that top highest priority decile but it gets to that highest priority decile for very different reasons uh in comparison to the previous example so in this case um it's the proximity and accessibility to supermarkets um non-supermarket food and access to online deliveries that are high priority but the neighbourhood receives low priority scores on factors relating to socio demographic barriers uh food support for families and uh fuel poverty well it's it's five so it's kind of in the middle of the range um of all neighbourhoods nationally so these two examples of these two different neighbourhoods show um why different neighbourhoods might score uh differently according to the overall index but for but for different reasons a couple of other features that I wanted to highlight on this tool um first as I said we're currently only showing the highest priority decile which is represented by these dark blue points but we can turn on all of the other deciles by clicking through the legend we can turn them on and then this allows us to see how the index varies um spatially over over different areas so so here I'm showing London and showing kind of the the the different spatial effects that come into play um across uh across across that area so London is quite an interesting example it has a lot of low priority areas according to the overall index which on the whole is driven by this accessibility to uh different sources of food that that is available within London um that's despite a lot of the areas scoring um quite high priority um on on some of the socio demographic uh domains so stylistically we chose to present this information using using points rather than areas due to the varying geographical size of the areas that we're um that we're analysing so we wanted each area to carry carry an equal representation within the map because it contains roughly a similar number of residents so one of the limitations resulting from this decision is that it might be difficult for any individual to understand which neighborhood exactly they fall into but our intention in in creating this map is to draw attention to the broader areas where where points are plotted rather than to any individual neighborhood or residential address a couple of other pieces of functionality um that are worth demonstrating on the tool is that is um that we can select um any one of the um different domains from the drop down menu uh and then once we select those from the drop down menu this then updates the map to only show um the that specific domain how each neighborhood ranks in in that specific domain again we're only showing the highest priority areas here represented by by the blue dots uh another feature is that we can toggle the locations the the highly granular locations of of the supermarkets um through that through that toggle switch which which shows where some of the supermarkets are located this was added to provide a more fine-grained view of supermarket accessibility and aligns with which is campaign targeted at the supermarkets to make to make accessible food for all one important thing to bear in mind when using the tool is that the index is built for each of the four devolved nations in the UK separately um this is due to slight variations in some of the underlying data sources as as Fran mentioned earlier on so the top 10% highest priority areas are not necessarily the top 10% in the UK but they're the top 10% within each of England Wales Scotland and Northern Ireland and because of this it's also not possible to compare neighborhoods across countries actually the comparison should happen only within within countries um I'm now going to hand over back to Emily for an overview of next steps for the index thanks Pete so just to give some indication of the um kind of initial splash or initial success of the tool's launch and also the affordable food for all campaign launch that began at the same time so on the very first day of priority places for food index's launch we had nearly 500 users of that tool which is really quite significant and we've seen a very consistent engagement with the index since that launch so as of about July we know that the site has been visited nearly eight and a half thousand times by over six and a half thousand unique visitors and that's since November 2022 obviously launched at the same time was which is affordable food for all campaign and again as of the end of July that that campaign has over a hundred thousand signatures which is really quite astounding and we were very lucky and so this is just thinking about the reach and where we've been able to disseminate this this work so we were very lucky that in April 2023 which and the food foundation jointly ran a event in the House of Commons called tackling the cost of food crisis which we were able to attend and which really kind of focused on challenging and kind of highlighting to to policy makers what's actually happening in the UK which have built constituency level reports for MPs and these have been distributed at the index's launch as well as this House of Commons event in April they've also been able to build briefings for devolved nations and so it's Wales Scotland and Northern Ireland and beyond the kind of public engagement work that we've done we've been able to launch the data portal which contains all of the data included in the index as well as the priority places explorer and which kind of gives some it's it's a GitHub site that it looks at the code that we use to develop the tool we've also been able to put some opinion and kind of comment and analysis pieces out there as well so in terms of the significance of what we've been able to achieve so we know that the priority places for food index is being used as part of monitoring and evaluation techniques for policy makers and we know it's being used as part of localised food strategies as well as by retailers to target high priority places and when the campaign itself was launched we saw that Aldi committed to the campaign on social media by highlighting that it already complied with with the action plan set out by which since then we've actually also seen marisons daily agree to increase the number of budget items sold in their convenience stores and that was reported by which in July of this year so we can see already a change in service and provision and a change in kind of economic behaviours of these retailers essentially based on the data that we were able to depict in priority places for food index and then the later work that which has done on the back of that exploring actual kind of provision of certain items in in stores especially in those those areas of high priority so moving very quickly onto the future and developments of priority places so we have planned and committed to an annual autumn update which will fall in line with the the autumn budget the release of the autumn budget we're currently toiling away behind the scenes to bring that to you and all future iterations of the tool will be open and therefore require open data so we're currently working through the data sets that are available to us to bring that to you and beyond that we have two further research projects and one of these is looking at mapping health inequalities onto priority places to see where whether these places of of higher priority actually coincide with poorer health outcomes and we're also looking at a project assessing food redistribution networks and essentially having a look to see if the food is going to those priority places as identified in the tool and there's also thankfully an ongoing relationship with which and that is until further notice so we're going to continue to have that platform as well to to lobby supermarkets to lobby decision makers and policy makers and to be able to kind of bring the data into the hands of people who are able to change lives and and change change the data that we're showing them so i'm going to stop there very conscious of time but i'm really really pleased to be able to bring this to you today and really really looking forward to your questions.