Long-Term Plan for Towns: towns selection methodology note
Published 1 October 2023
Applies to England, Scotland and Wales
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This note sets out the methodology used to select the 55 places identified as part of the Long-Term Plan for Towns across Great Britain.
These places can be found in the table below:
| ITL1/2 Region | Local authority | Town/place* |
|---|---|---|
| East Midlands | Mansfield | Mansfield |
| East Midlands | Boston | Boston |
| East Midlands | Bassetlaw | Worksop |
| East Midlands | East Lindsey | Skegness |
| East Midlands | Newark and Sherwood | Newark-on-Trent |
| East Midlands | Chesterfield | Chesterfield |
| East Midlands | Nottingham | Clifton (Nottingham) |
| East Midlands | South Holland | Spalding |
| East Midlands | Ashfield | Kirkby-in-Ashfield |
| East of England | Tendring | Clacton-on-Sea |
| East of England | Great Yarmouth | Great Yarmouth |
| North East | Redcar and Cleveland | Eston |
| North East | South Tyneside | Jarrow |
| North East | Sunderland | Washington |
| North East | Northumberland | Blyth (Northumberland) |
| North East | Hartlepool | Hartlepool |
| North East | County Durham | Spennymoor |
| North West | Blackburn with Darwen | Darwen |
| North West | Oldham | Chadderton |
| North West | Rochdale | Heywood |
| North West | Tameside | Ashton-under-Lyne |
| North West | Hyndburn | Accrington |
| North West | Wigan | Leigh (Wigan) |
| North West | Bolton | Farnworth |
| North West | Pendle | Nelson (Pendle) |
| North West | Knowsley | Kirkby |
| North West | Burnley | Burnley |
| South East | Hastings | Hastings |
| South East | Rother | Bexhill-on-Sea |
| South East | Isle of Wight | Ryde |
| South West | Torbay | Torquay |
| West Midlands | Sandwell | Smethwick |
| West Midlands | Walsall | Darlaston |
| West Midlands | Wolverhampton | Bilston (Wolverhampton) |
| West Midlands | Dudley | Dudley (Dudley) |
| Yorkshire and The Humber | North East Lincolnshire | Grimsby |
| Yorkshire and The Humber | Wakefield | Castleford |
| Yorkshire and The Humber | Doncaster | Doncaster |
| Yorkshire and The Humber | Rotherham | Rotherham |
| Yorkshire and The Humber | Barnsley | Barnsley |
| Yorkshire and The Humber | North Lincolnshire | Scunthorpe |
| Yorkshire and The Humber | Bradford | Keighley |
| Yorkshire and The Humber | Kirklees | Dewsbury |
| Yorkshire and The Humber | North Yorkshire** | Scarborough |
| West Wales and The Valleys | Merthyr Tydfil | Merthyr Tydfil |
| West Wales and The Valleys | Torfaen | Cwmbrân |
| East Wales | Wrexham | Wrexham |
| East Wales | Vale of Glamorgan | Barry (Vale of Glamorgan) |
| West Central Scotland | Inverclyde | Greenock |
| Southern Scotland | North Ayrshire | Irvine |
| Southern Scotland | East Ayrshire | Kilmarnock |
| West Central Scotland | North Lanarkshire | Coatbridge |
| West Central Scotland | West Dunbartonshire | Clydebank |
| Southern Scotland | Dumfries and Galloway | Dumfries |
| Highlands & Islands | Moray | Elgin |
*There is no statistical definition of a city. Some of the selected places have city status but they have been identified on the basis of deprivation and they have a population size of 20,000 to 100,000.
**Due to data availability Local Authority Levelling Up need was calculated based on local government boundaries as of 2022. Scarborough was the identified local authority which was abolished and the new North Yorkshire Council was established on 1 April 2023.
To generate the above list, lower tier local authorities were ranked according to their Levelling Up Need separately in England, Scotland and Wales. Local authorities without suitably sized built up areas were removed, and regional caps have been applied to facilitate geographic spread.
The most deprived Built Up Area (BUA) within each of these local authorities was then selected using the rankings of the respective nation IMD (the English Indices of Multiple Deprivation, the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation, and the Welsh Index of Multiple Deprivation).
The Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities approved the overall methodology. He did not add or remove any local authorities or towns from the process. The rest of this note outlines each of these steps in detail.
We will set out more detail of our approach to providing support in Northern Ireland in due course.
Step 1: Ranking local authorities within each nation according to Levelling Up Need
The ranking of local authorities by Levelling Up Need was developed in accordance with the Levelling Up White Paper (figure 1.13, page 18) which combines 4 metrics relevant to understanding place performance.
These metrics cover skills, pay, productivity and health. For each metric, the 3 most recent UK-wide statistical releases are averaged to reduce volatility in the data and ensure the outputs are robust.
| Metric | Source | Dates used | Geographic level |
|---|---|---|---|
| NVQ Level 3+ (% of total population) | ONS annual population survey, Nomis | 3-year average (Jan- Dec 2019-21) | Lower-tier Local Authority |
| Healthy Life Expectancy | ONS Health state life expectancy at birth and at age 65 years by local areas, UK | 3-year average* (2016/18-2018/20) | Upper-tier Local Authority** |
| Median Gross Weekly Pay (£) | ONS annual survey of hours and earnings. The equivalent Northern Ireland data can be accessed from NIRSA. | 3 year average (2019-21) | Lower-tier Local Authority |
| Gross Value Added (GVA) per Hour Worked | ONS Sub-regional Productivity: labour productivity indices by local authority district | 3-year average (2018-20) | Lower-tier Local Authority |
*Data released in 3-year intervals and used for 2016-2018, 2017-2019 and 2018-2020.
**Upper tier local authority data used for all component lower tier local authorities as lower tier data does not exist in a consistent fashion. This affects the 24 county council areas in England.
For each metric, all lower tier local authorities across the UK are ranked and those that fall into the bottom quartile are assigned a value of “1”. The number of times each place is in the bottom quartile against each of the 4 metrics is then summed to give a bottom quartile count out of 4.
A priority list of local authorities within each nation is then generated which includes all local authorities in the bottom quartile against 3 or more of the 4 metrics.
To complement the quartiles approach, local authorities are scored according to their relative performance against each metric to generate an overall score for Levelling Up Need. We score places from 0 to 1 for each metric using a min-max normalisation technique, which reflects an area’s performance relative to the rest of the UK, and then an average across each of the 4 min-max normalised scores is taken.
Step 2: Excluding local authorities without eligible Built-up areas within the population threshold and applying regional caps
To ensure local authorities with appropriately sized places are selected, a population threshold has been applied. Local authorities across England, Scotland and Wales without a BUA or Locality with a population between 20,000 to 100,000 people have been excluded from the list of local authorities.
To apply this threshold, the following data has been used:
- In England, BUAs are matched to local authorities using the ‘LSOA (2021) to Built Up Area to Local Authority District to Region (December 2022) Lookup in England and Wales v2’ table and the population has been taken from the usual resident population estimates by BUA for England and Wales, 2021 dataset.
- In Scotland, localities are matched to local authorities using the City & Town Classification of Output Areas dataset. This dataset has also been used to estimate the population of each Locality.
- In Wales, BUAs are matched to local authorities using the ‘LSOA (2021) to Built Up Area to Local Authority District to Region (December 2022) Lookup in England and Wales v2’ table and the population has been taken from the usual resident population estimates by BUA for England and Wales, 2021 dataset.
To facilitate geographic spread, regional caps have also been applied within each nation:
- In England, a cap of 10 local authorities per ITL1 region has been applied. If an ITL1 region has more than 10 local authorities in the initial list, the lowest scoring local authorities for Levelling Up Need are removed from the list and replaced by local authorities from a different ITL1 region in order of their Levelling Up Need.
- In Scotland, a cap of 3 local authorities per ITL2 region has been applied. If an ITL2 region has more than 3 local authorities in the initial list, then the lowest scoring local authorities for Levelling Up Need are removed and replaced by local authorities from a different ITL2 region in order of their Levelling Up Need.
- In Wales, a cap of 2 local authorities per ITL2 region has been applied. If an ITL2 region has more than 3 local authorities in the initial list, then the lowest scoring local authorities for Levelling Up Need are removed and replaced by local authorities from a different ITL2 region in order of their Levelling Up Need.
In England, the top 44 local authorities based on Levelling Up Need that met the population threshold and regional cap were selected. In Scotland, the top 7 are selected. In Wales, the top 4 are selected.
Step 3: Selecting the most deprived Built-up area within the ranked local authority list
To select the town chosen within each local authority, each Built-up area (BUA) with a population between 20,000 and 100,000 within each local authority was ranked by the Index of Multiple Deprivation for each nation, as there is no UK wide Index. The most BUA or within each local authority was then selected.
To estimate BUA and locality level deprivation:
- In England, the 2019 Indices of Deprivation has been aggregated to BUA level using IMD ranks for each Lower Super Output Area (LSOA). LSOAs are matched to BUAs using the ‘LSOA (2021) to Built Up Area to Local Authority District to Region (December 2022) Lookup in England and Wales v2’ table. The IMD rank of all the corresponding LSOAs in each BUA have been averaged, using a simple mean. Where a LSOA boundary has been updated since 2011, the IMD rank for the most appropriate LSOA as of 2011 has been used for the 2021 LSOA.
- In Wales, the Welsh Index of Multiple Deprivation 2019 has been aggregated to BUA level using IMD ranks for each LSOA. LSOAs have been matched to BUAs using the ‘LSOA (2021) to Built Up Area to Local Authority District to Region (December 2022) Lookup in England and Wales v2’ table. The IMD rank of all the corresponding LSOAs in each BUA have been averaged, using a simple mean. Where an LSOA boundary has been updated since 2011, the IMD rank for the most appropriate LSOA as of 2011 has been used for the 2021 LSOA.
- In Scotland, the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation has been aggregated to BUA level using IMD ranks for each Data Zone (DZ). The IMD rank of all the corresponding DZ in each Locality have been averaged, using a simple mean. To match each DZ to a Locality, the City & Town Classification of Output Areas dataset has been used.