City Science was commissioned by Cambridge & Peterborough Combined Authority to develop a State of the Region 2024 report and interactive dashboard that provide a comprehensive, evidence-based assessment of the region’s current economic, social, and environmental landscape. The Review aimed to inform the region’s Strategic Planning process and policy development. It builds on previous work, including their Independent Economic Review (CPIER, 2018).
Scope
City Science was commissioned by Cambridge & Peterborough Combined Authority (CPCA) to develop a State of the Region 2024 report and dashboard that provide a comprehensive, evidence-based assessment of the region’s current economic, social, and environmental landscape. The Review aimed to inform the region’s Strategic Planning process and policy development. It builds on previous work, including their Independent Economic Review (CPIER, 2018).
The Cambridgeshire & Peterborough (C&P) region is home to a diverse and thriving economy, renowned for its world-class universities, cutting-edge innovation clusters, rapidly growing knowledge-based industries, and unique environment and environmental assets. However, alongside these significant strengths, the region faces several critical challenges, including issues related to connectivity, skills development, and inclusive growth. Additionally, the region is confronted with environmental and geographical challenges, such as low-lying land, susceptibility to drought and other climate-related impacts, and low biodiversity.
The CPCA was established in 2017 and covers a significant extent of the East of England, which includes the local authorities of Cambridge City Council, Cambridgeshire County Council, East Cambridgeshire District Council, Fenland District Council, Huntingdonshire District Council, Peterborough City Council, and South Cambridgeshire District Council.
This State of the Region 2024 provides a comprehensive, evidence-based assessment of C&P’s current economic, social, and environmental landscape. By analysing the most up-to-date data and insights from across the region, this report serves as a resource and evidence base for stakeholders, policymakers, and community leaders to understand the area’s opportunities, priorities, and pathways for sustainable growth and prosperity.
City Science Response
We developed the State of the Region as a comprehensive analysis, structured around 140 distinct indicators across eight key themes. This holistic approach reflects stakeholders’ commitment to capturing a detailed and nuanced picture of the region’s current status and future prospects. The themes and data have been selected and refined, through a process of continuous engagement with core stakeholders, ensuring they resonate with local priorities and leverage relevant data sources.
To ensure the relevance and accuracy of these themes and indicators, we conducted a rigorous process of development involving stakeholder interviews, technical consultations, and comprehensive reviews of policies and best practices. This iterative and collaborative approach ensured that the datasets presented align with strategic regional needs, but also reflect the priorities and insights of local partners.
Key Work Packages:
- Strategy & Policy Review: Identifying key themes within the stakeholder strategies in order to more accurately refine the data and analytical methods proposed in later stages. Our review focussed on consolidating future data needs to further inform the selected metrics to ensure the State of the Region is future-proofed for anticipated local needs.
- Literature & Best Practice Review: Reviewing current best-practice in data storytelling and dashboard development, identifying areas where the State of the Region project can enhance (and not duplicate) existing data provision within the region.
- Theme Development: Drawing on priorities from the insight interviews, evidence from the Policy and Strategy Review and wider stakeholder input, defining a series of thematic areas of focus, designed to reinforce the data collection and analysis approach.
- Data Consolidation and Appraisal: Utilising the themes from the previous stage, a detailed data consolidation exercise was undertaken to identify relevant data. We co-designed and applied an appraisal methodology to enable prioritisation of datasets, and ensure that the datasets selected for the final State of the Region provide the best long-term value to local partners.
- Narrative and Storyboarding: Alongside the bottom-up process of identifying indicators, our storyboarding exercise identified key analytical questions and explored potential narrative structures for the final report.
The eight key themes are categorised into five core themes and three cross-cutting themes. These are fundamental to understanding the region’s economic, social, and environmental health. The three cross-cutting themes, Tackling Inequality; Place; and Connectivity, transcend individual categories, addressing issues that permeate multiple aspects of regional development.
- Place identifies key facts regarding urbanisation and land use, such as 90% of the population residing in Built Up Areas, despite only 8% of the land being classified as such. Meanwhile, the significance of high-grade agricultural land is also highlighted to underscore the region’s diverse assets.
- Business & Enterprise investigates the thriving economy, responsible for £31 billion in Gross Value Added (GVA) annually and highlights areas of strength, such as Life Science and Healthcare sectors, and provides up-to-date analysis of areas such as the knowledge economy and global competitiveness.
- Workforce, Jobs & Skills highlights data from across the employment landscape, covering 256,000 jobs. This considers the growth in knowledge-intensive sectors, particularly in Cambridge and South Cambridgeshire, as well as the quality of work and inequalities between local districts.
- The Health & Wellbeing indicators start to reveal further geographic disparities, for example, differences in mortality rates and health indicators across the region. Yet, positive trends are also observed, such as declining levels of smoking prevalence.
- Environmental stewardship is evident in the Wildlife & Nature theme, with a range of indicators discussed to support the region’s commitment to preserving and enhancing natural assets.
- Net Zero & Climate Resilience covers the tangible emissions reductions made across the region to date, whilst setting out challenges such as the decarbonisation of buildings and increasing environmental risks.
- In addressing Tackling Inequality, the report unveils key disparities in incomes, employment gaps, and a range of other metrics underscoring the need for targeted intervention.
- And finally, Connectivity reveals varying digital and transportation needs, at local, regional and inter-regional levels, presenting the need for investment to bring the region’s digital and transport connectivity up to that of some of its peers.
Dashboard
This 2024 State of the Region is complemented by a live, online, interactive dashboard that enables users to find and explore the data summarised in this report, alongside providing access to the raw data.
Outcomes
Throughout the project, we have taken a data-driven approach to improve local data quality and enhance interpretation skills, leveraging our in-house flagship GIS and visualisation platform, Cadence 360. The analysis of each indicator is presented in a highly interactive dashboard, designed to meet the specific needs and priorities of our stakeholders. Each key indicator is carefully tailored to provide relevant insights, ensuring that stakeholders can easily access and understand the information. The dashboard features visually engaging elements such as dynamic maps, charts, and graphs, offering an intuitive and clear representation of the findings. An accompanying report was also produced, detailing the findings presented in the dashboard. It is anticipated that the State of the Region will be conducted annually by CPCA, using the data sets and processes developed by City Science for the 2024 review.
Client Feedback
The State of the Region 2024 report offers a detailed evidence base to identify the key trends, opportunities and challenges in the region, and aims to provide a solid, up-to-date foundation to support future decisions on investment, strategy and policy, in support of a more prosperous and sustainable future for the region.
It aims to support the Combined Authority and its partners in shaping strategies that build on the region’s strengths and address challenges. This includes key economic sectors like life sciences, advanced manufacturing and agri-tech, while addressing areas like inequality and barriers to sustainable growth such as transport, housing, and water. It will also help to champion the region and support engagement with the Government on growth, devolution and future funding.
A key feature of The State of the Region 2024 is its interactive dashboard, which allows users to explore the data in multiple formats, including charts, tables, and maps. This makes it an accessible resource for a range of stakeholders – from local government and businesses to community leaders and residents. Whether someone is interested in the impact of new infrastructure projects, changes in the local job market, or the health of the natural environment, the dashboard offers a clear and user-friendly way to access the data. Another key part of the report is that it is not just a snapshot in time, but a shared resource that will continue to evolve as new data becomes available, and being refreshed annually.
The report has been co-produced in partnership with a broad range of stakeholders, aiming to reflect the priorities and concerns of the entire region. Key partners in local councils, the health sector, business groups, the education sector and voluntary sector were all engaged with, with feedback being incorporated into the final report.
The State of the Region will also help inform the development of a new Local Growth Plan for Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, which will set out to Government how the Combined Authority intends to drive growth.
Testimonials
- Dr Nik Johnson, Mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, said: “The State of the Region offers a detailed view of where we stand today and will help us make smarter, more informed decisions on everything from growing our economy, to creating jobs and protecting our environment.”
- Laurence Oakes-Ash, CEO of City Science, which was commissioned work on the report, said: “We are proud to have collaborated on this ground-breaking State of the Region project for Cambridgeshire and Peterborough. Working extensively with a diverse range of stakeholders, the team hope we have been able to set a new standard for best practice in this field and that the report and dashboard will serve as an invaluable resource. We are excited to see how the State of the Region assets evolve over the years to come to drive insights and support positive change.”