Research and analysis

Highlands: UKSPF summary evaluation plan

Published 4 April 2025

Applies to Scotland

Summary of the local place

The Highland Council area covers around one third (33%) of Scotland’s land mass and has the lowest population density of any Local Authority in Scotland.^{[footnote 1]} In 2021, there were 235,900 people living in Highland, accounting for 4.4% of the population of Scotland as a whole.^{[footnote 2]} The region can be broken down into three areas: Lochaber, Skye and Wester Ross (population of 39,300), Inner Moray Firth (population of 158,300), and Caithness and Sutherland (population of 38,300).^{[footnote 3]} Inverness, the region’s only city and ‘the Capital of the Highlands’, is situated in the Inner Moray Firth.

Map of Highland

Source: Ipsos

The United Kingdom Shared Prosperity Fund (UKSPF) allocation for Highland over the three-year programme is £9,445,515, which comprises £7,814,362 core UKSPF (ex. admin costs) and £1,631,153 ‘Multiply’ funding. Core UKSPF funding (excluding ‘Multiply’) was allocated evenly across the three investment priorities with Communities and Place, Supporting Local Businesses and People and Skills.

Unit of analysis

The place level evaluation of Highland will focus on the whole local authority (LA) area due to the predominance of LA-wide delivery of interventions. It will look across all three investment priorities, with a focus on: (1) the Community Regeneration Fund, offering community groups and organisations the opportunity to apply for funding for town centre improvements, community assets, infrastructure projects and impactful volunteering/social action projects, and investment in capacity building and resilience for local groups; (2) Support to local businesses, comprising small grants to support startups and facilitate growth, tailored advice from specialist advisors to support transition to net-zero and investments in the wider enterprise infrastructure, including infrastructure investment in tourism; and (3) Green skills training and facilities, inviting Highland businesses in consortia to apply for funding to support costs of green skills training for their workforce.

The central delivery team in Highland Council has not evaluated UKSPF interventions to date, although some concrete activities linked to the fund have been independently evaluated. The central Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) evaluation will provide invaluable evidence to Highland Council on what worked, and why, in delivering the UKSPF funding.

Methodological approach

Process evaluation

A process evaluation will explore the relevance, efficiency and effectiveness of fund design and interventions and the efficiency and effectiveness of processes used to manage and deliver the Fund. The approach to the process evaluation will include:

• a review of the evolution of the local context
• analysis of Monitoring Information (MI) to evidence the progress in Highland’s delivery of the programme
• stakeholder and beneficiary qualitative research to explore the set-up and implementation of the UKSPF investment in Highland

Impact evaluation

As part of the scoping phase, we have conducted an appraisal of impact methodologies for the Highland case study. Our review indicates that it will not be feasible or proportionate to deliver Quasi Experimental Design (QED) approaches because of challenges establishing a counterfactual:

• All interventions are available across the LA area and there are no readily comparable control areas within Highland.
• Based on our review of the portfolio, there are limited possibilities to build a credible counterfactual for QED analysis within the interventions of interest. For example, businesses were declined grant funding or support if they did not meet the eligibility criteria, not because of limited supply of available funding.

Contribution analysis will be used to assess what changes have taken place in Highland, whether UKSPF has contributed to outcome achievement, how and why. The research team will develop a contribution or performance narrative for outcomes expected to be achieved in Highland, linked to the Theory of Change, using:

• Management information: This will provide data on the progress towards and achievement of outcomes as outlined in Highland Investment Plan. It will also involve mapping of projects within interventions (e.g. UKSPF funded projects under the Community Regeneration Fund against thematic priorities).
• Secondary data sources: Secondary datasets outlined in Section 5 will be assessed case-by-case for their potential to robustly identify additional outcomes and impacts of UKSPF interventions. There are potential limitations in using some secondary data sources. The scale of the activity may not generate a large enough impact for the effects to be clearly seen in several secondary datasets. Attribution is also an issue, for example, directly linking tourism or cultural activities that take place on specific dates to increases in visitor numbers which are captured over a longer period. Nonetheless, these datasets may provide useful contextual information to support the evaluation.
• Primary research with stakeholders: Stakeholder research will be a key element of the process evaluation and will provide an opportunity to capture data on outcomes from the perspective of stakeholders and critically allow exploration of why outcomes have or haven’t been achieved and the contexts in which this occurred – an important element of the contribution story.
• Primary research with beneficiaries: Research with beneficiaries will allow a more in-depth exploration of the outcomes achieved. Approaches including an online survey, depth interviews and the ‘Your Community, Your Say’ survey will be used to collect views from participants of interventions being examined and perceptions of the local area.
• Primary research with non-beneficiaries: We will conduct an online survey and depth interviews with firms who applied but did not receive grant funding under UKSPF to explore the counterfactual via self-reported data. The research team will also explore primary research with other non-beneficiaries in the Communities and Place and People and Skills priorities.

Economic evaluation

The evaluation in Highland 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

The following sources of data will be used:

Primary data collection

Secondary data sources

■ Online survey with businesses applying for business support grants ■ In depth interviews with beneficiaries (businesses, supported projects, trained individuals) and non-beneficiaries (businesses that applied for a grant but withdrew their application) ■ In depth interviews with stakeholders internal to Highland Council (e.g. core delivery team), external stakeholders (e.g. Highlands and Islands Enterprise) and delivery partners (e.g. University of the Highlands and Islands, High Life Highland)

■ ‘Your Community, Your Say’ survey ■ MI collected by Highland Council and delivery partners ■ Business level administrative data (e.g. Scottish Government Businesses in Scotland data, Companies House, Business Structure Database) ■ Scottish Enterprise and Business Gateway data ■ Visit Britain and Visit Scotland visitor data

1. Highland Council website (Accessed 27/9/24) ↩

2. ONS Population Estimates (Accessed via NOMIS 27/9/24) ↩

3. Highlands and Islands Enterprise (Accessed 27/9/24) ↩