Alcohol licensing: understanding and applying public health data
Published 8 March 2017
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1. Public Health England (PHE) tools
1.1 Local Health
Local Health provides access to interactive maps and reports at a small area level, referred to as the middle super output area (MSOA) and at local authority level. You can also combine areas to create your own geographies and view information and reports for these new areas. Reports produced in Local Health allow you to compare any selected area to the England average for a range of indicators.
Currently within Local Health there are two indicators specifically related to alcohol:
- hospital stays for alcohol related harm
- binge-drinking adults
If you have other data available at MSOA level that you can import into Local Health, for example licensed premises density, you can then view a map of the imported data alongside existing Local Health indicators to provide a simple visual comparison.
1.2 SHAPE Tool
The Strategic Health Asset Planning and Evaluation (SHAPE) tool is a web-enabled, evidence-based application which informs and supports the strategic planning of services and physical assets across a whole health economy. It contains data that is relevant to alcohol harm and can provide local insight and context. It is free to use for professionals with a role in public health or social care. You will need to apply if you want to use it.
The tool includes:
- a set of predefined indicators
- a mapping function so that all data can be described visually
- downloadable reports
1.3 PHE data and analysis tools
You can access all of PHE’s data and analysis tools at the PHE data and knowledge gateway.
2. National tools
2.1 Police data
On the police data website you can download street-level crime, outcome, and stop and search data and explore detailed crime data and information about individual police forces and neighbourhood teams. This data can be categorised by crime type and displayed alongside longitude/latitude and lower layer super output area (LSOA) details. This makes it possible to calculate rates of crime by any geographical area of interest. Areas can then be matched with alcohol admission data to evidence any potential links. Point data can also be mapped against off licence density or hospital admissions.
You can also download data on police activity and a range of data collected under the police annual data requirement (ADR) including details of arrests and 101 call handling.
The crime map tool allows you to explore and compare outcomes of crime in any neighbourhood. You can search for a neighbourhood by postcode or place name or they can also create their own map boundaries, for example by CIP area, in the mapping tool. Data can be filtered out to show different type of crimes such as anti-social behaviour or violence and sexual offences.
2.2 LG Inform
LG Inform presents health-related data, including the alcohol-related indicators from PHE’s Local Health, alongside a wide range of other data sources.
The report and mapping functions are most useful for scene setting and providing a profile of a local authority. You can create a report which provides a summary of the latest available information on the demographic and socio-economic make-up of an area. This can be used to provide background information to explain the alcohol-related indicators. The indicators can be presented to allow comparison within local authorities and to wider areas, so it is possible to consider local or regional figures. The indicators can be presented so it can be compared with other areas. This allows you to compare data toregional or national figures.
This service is free to use for local authorities but local authorities can upload their own datasets to the tool for use alongside the other data for a fee.
3. Mapping tools
Mapping health data alongside other data sources can help local areas to demonstrate potential links between individual or clusters of licensed premises in the licensing authority area and the populations with the chronic health harms being targeted.
Where specific location point data is available, such as licensed premises, assault location or ambulance pick up points, this can be imported into mapping software. This can be viewed with an alcohol-related indicator to allow exploration of potential links between point density and alcohol related harm in specific local areas.
Mapping is also a good way of understanding data is to visualise the numbers as a picture. This can make it easier to identify patterns or to expose patterns that might not be clear otherwise.
Many local public health teams may already be using mapping software such as MapInfo, ArcGIS, InstantAtlas, QGIS or Local Health. If not, they may have access to mapping capabilities from other local authority departments. If there isn’t currently software in other departments, free GIS mapping software is available online.
A good place to start to see if you have anything like this is via your planning department. Most planning departments have some kind of mapping software used in day to day work.
Some examples of Mapping software: