Research and analysis

Chesterfield: UKSPF summary evaluation plan

Published 4 April 2025

Applies to England

Summary of the local place

Chesterfield, located in the East Midlands, is a predominantly urban borough that includes the market towns of Chesterfield and Staveley, with the former being the largest town in Derbyshire. Chesterfield’s strategic location, within a 30-minute drive of half a million people, is a key factor in its role as a hub for surrounding rural areas. Despite this advantage, Chesterfield’s economy faces significant challenges. Over the last decade, local business growth has lagged regional and national rates. Moreover, visitor numbers dropped significantly during the pandemic and have not yet returned to pre-pandemic levels, with negative implications for the local economy. Chesterfield is also characterised by a high level of local income-deprivation, lower-than-average employment rate and a high out-of-work benefit claim rate among young people.

Chesterfield’s United Kingdom Shared Prosperity Fund (UKSPF) interventions, with a total value of £2.7 million, aim to improve quality of life, foster social inclusion and increase local economic opportunities by enhancing public spaces and fostering stronger community engagement, while simultaneously supporting business growth and increasing employment opportunities.

Map of Chesterfield

Unit of analysis

Funded interventions in Chesterfield aim to support individuals, communities and businesses within the local area. The evaluation will largely adopt a bottom-up approach, exploring the impact on beneficiaries (individuals, communities and businesses) and then aggregating these benefits to the district level. The alternative top-down approach was deemed unsuitable for most of the outcomes and impacts to be assessed in this evaluation, due to the relatively small scale of the interventions. A limited number of outcomes and impacts are expected to have area-wide impact and will be analysed at the district level.

Thematically, the evaluation’s focus will be the Communities and Place, and Supporting Local Businesses investment priorities, as these two themes collectively account for over 80% of Chesterfield’s UKSPF investments to date. The evaluation will also undertake an examination of the People and Skills priority theme, assessing the programme’s progress and impact in upskilling residents in the area.

Methodological approach

We will adopt a mixed-methods approach that combines primary research, secondary data analysis, and quasi-experimental approaches, underpinned by a contribution analysis framework.

Process evaluation

The process evaluation considers the four main elements of UKSPF delivery and management in Chesterfield: fund design, fund implementation, intervention delivery, and data collection and monitoring. We will collect evidence on these through reviews of local data and documentation, interviews with local stakeholders and secondary data. We will analyse evidence using a bespoke process evaluation framework that has 22 process evaluation questions relevant to Chesterfield.

Impact evaluation

Given the nature of the interventions implemented in Chesterfield, it is only feasible to use quasi-experimental designs to assess a small number of outcomes and impacts. This is because a notable proportion of UKSPF interventions in Chesterfield are available to all residents and there are no feasible non-beneficiary groups to use as a comparator. Moreover, some of the intended impacts are difficult to quantify. Nevertheless, there are three outcome and impact areas where it may be feasible and practical to undertake quasi-experimental approaches:1) the impacts of business support services and grants (subject to sufficient sample size given the relatively small impact the interventions will have); 2) the impacts of anti-crime and anti-social behaviour (ASB) interventions (subject to the ability to construct a geographically bounded treatment area and the granularity of crime/ ASB data). For all other outcome and impact areas, the evaluation will draw primarily on a theory-based evaluation (TBE) approach. Specifically, it will use a contribution analysis framework (see Appendix A) to systematically test all the evidence collected to determine whether the Theory of Change is valid explanation of change, and how far external factors may have influenced outcomes more.

Economic evaluation

Following the National Audit Office’s 4Es, the evaluation will consider programme economy (by assessing ability to leverage additional in-kind or financial support), efficiency (by calculating costs per output and costs per outcomes, and benchmarking these against comparator programmes), effectiveness (using contribution analysis and QED to determine whether UKSPF is plausible driver for outcomes), and equity (determining whether UKSPF has gone to the communities most in need of it).

Data to support the evaluation

Secondary data sources

Census and IMD data will be utilised, alongside monitoring data, to determine how far Chesterfield’s interventions have reached those in greatest need for the process evaluation. Due to the limited temporal coverage of IMD data, it will be supplemented with data from the Chesterfield Deprivation Index developed by CBC using Census 2021 data. For the impact evaluation, we will also analyse Huq footfall data, CBC footfall data and the Community Life Survey (CLS) to examine the impact of local UKSPF interventions on local resident activity and on their attitudes to the local area. Where possible, we will use the Interdepartmental Business Register to monitor business performance over time for business grantees, again to investigate whether UKSPF has had an effect here.

Primary data collection

A beneficiary survey for the Community Grants Programme will be an important data source. It will not be feasible to survey beneficiaries of all interventions, as many of Chesterfield’s UKSPF interventions are focused on upgrading local infrastructure and holding public events. These types of interventions primarily result in diffuse and indirect benefits, making it costly and challenging to identify and sample a distinct beneficiary group. We will therefore prioritise a survey with the Community Grants Programme, an evaluation priority project for which there is limited availability of relevant secondary data sources. These will help obtain information on the quality and outcomes of interventions, and as appropriate, details on economic, health and social circumstances.

We will also conduct semi-structured interviews, focused on both impact and process elements. Longer interviews (45-60 minutes) with Chesterfield Borough Council (CBC) staff and key strategic stakeholders will cover project-level and programme-level perspectives. Interviews with all delivery provider leads will last 30-45 minutes, with lighter touch programme-level discussions. Beneficiary interviews will have a maximum duration of 30 minutes, focused on specific key issues.