Research and analysis

Blaby: UKSPF summary evaluation plan

Published 16 October 2024

Applies to England

Summary of the local place

The district of Blaby is located in the county of Leicestershire, 5 miles south west of Leicester city centre. It covers an area of 13,047 hectares (50 square miles) and comprises 25 towns and villages of varying sizes. The northern part of the district is predominantly urban, while the southern part has several villages with rural characteristics. Blaby had a population of approximately 102,900 people in 2021.

Map of Blaby

Blaby has received £2.1 million of UKSPF investment which is being used to support a wide range of small-to-medium size projects. Many interventions in Blaby fall within the community health support theme, with several initiatives focused on referrals to mental health services and social prescribing to non-clinical services designed to increase physical activity or active travel.

Interventions within the business support theme are also well represented within the portfolio, with projects designed to provide both generic and bespoke, tailored packages of business support. Other initiatives focus on improving safety within the local community (e.g., instalments of CCTV).  

Unit of analysis

The evaluation will adopt a bottom-up approach, measuring the impact on individual and business beneficiaries and aggregating these benefits at the District level. The alternative top-down approach was deemed unsuitable for this evaluation due to the relatively small scale of the interventions, which may not yield noticeable impacts at the regional level. The evaluation will encompass all areas within the District, but, where appropriate, will focus on the impact observed within small geographical areas that have specifically benefited from an intervention (e.g., the instalment of CCTV).

The evaluation design needs to account for the breadth of interventions funded in Year 1 and Year 2. While several complementary interventions share similar outcomes and impacts, the objectives of other funded interventions vary significantly, complicating the evaluation process. As such, the evaluation will cover all funded activities, but the depth of the analysis will vary. The primary focus will be on the priority investments detailed above, involving in-depth secondary data analysis and, in some cases, a quasi-experimental design (QED) approach. The benefits from all other interventions will be captured through a delivery partner survey or a selection of beneficiary interviews.

Methodological approach

Process evaluation

We will undertake a process evaluation to assess the relevance, efficiency, and effectiveness of process used. This process evaluation will be informed through several data sources, including:

• Document review: a review of relevant documentation to understand the fund’s design, objectives, and strategic alignment with local and national goals.

• Stakeholder interviews: interviews with Blaby District Council staff, a selection of local delivery providers, and other relevant stakeholders such as the Chamber of Commerce. These interviews will capture insights into the effectiveness of the design and delivery processes.

• Monitoring and secondary data: data analysis demonstrating the scale of local challenges and how Blaby compares to other regions. Having identified the communities most in need of support, we’ll use monitoring data to determine how far Blaby District Council has reached its target beneficiary groups.

Impact evaluation

Through a feasibility assessment, we determined that a QED is suitable for two impact areas, including:

• Business performance: we will use firm-level data from Blaby District Council’s case management system and link this to Crunchbase^{[footnote 1]} and Inter-Departmental Business Register to conduct analysis comparing the business performance of beneficiaries to a matched group of non-beneficiaries drawn from the general business population.

• Crime rates: we will use geographically granular data from police records and the Crime Survey for England and Wales to assess the changes in crime rates and fear of crime in areas with and without CCTV. We will employ Propensity Score Matching to account for differences in area characteristics prior to the interventions, including demographics and crime history.

Given the small scale of interventions implemented in Blaby and the lack of suitable control units, it will be feasible to use QED to assess a very small number of outcomes and impacts. For all other benefit types identified in the ToC, the evaluation will draw primarily on a theory-based evaluation (TBE) approach. We will use contribution analysis as a way of systematically testing all the evidence collected to determine whether the ToC is valid explanation of change, and whether other factors may have influenced outcomes.

Economic evaluation

The evaluation in Blaby will include a value for money assessment following the National Audit Office 4E’s approach, assessing the economy, efficiency, effectiveness, and equity of the UKSPF interventions.

Data to support the evaluation

Primary data collection

Our analysis will draw on the following primary data collection activities:

• interviews with key stakeholders (e.g. Blaby District Council UKSPF delivery team, Chamber of Commerce)

• delivery providers survey and interviews

• beneficiary surveys and interviews

Secondary data sources

Our analysis will draw on the following secondary data collection activities:

• programme monitoring data analysis (e.g. number of individuals and businesses supported, geographical areas reached and type of support provided)

• secondary data analysis using data from the Business Structure Database, Understanding Society, Crime Survey in England and Wales, and the Index of Multiple Deprivation

1. Crunchbase provides valuable information on companies’ funding raising activity (company’s funding history, including the amount of money raised, investors involved, and the date of each funding round), financial data (financial metrics such as revenue, valuation, and funding status), and news and updates related to the company. More information is available on the Crunchbase website. ↩