Research and analysis

Newcastle-under-Lyme: UKSPF summary evaluation plan

Published 4 April 2025

Applies to England

Summary of the local place

The Borough of Newcastle-under-Lyme (NUL) is a local government district situated in North Staffordshire bordering Stoke-on-Trent to the East. It is predominantly made up of urban areas but there are several parks and greenspaces throughout the borough. NUL has a population of 128,060^{[footnote 1]}. Staffordshire also includes the Borough of Tamworth, another United Kingdom Shared Prosperity Fund (UKSPF) place level case study. The M6 motorway runs through the centre of the borough, borders the market town, Newcastle-under-Lyme.

Map of Newcastle-under-Lyme

Newcastle-under-Lyme has just over £4.8 million of core UKSPF budget, which has been allocated across the three investment priorities: Communities and Place (£3.0 million), Supporting Local Business (£1.4 million), and People and Skills (£0.2 million). An additional allocation of £0.3 million goes to general administration and management of the UKSPF projects. Linked to the UKSPF objectives are other sources of funding for the borough such as from the Towns Fund^{[footnote 2]} (just over £23 million) and the Future High Streets Fund^{[footnote 3]} (£11 million).

Interventions in the Communities and Place investment priority follow two interlinked goals: supporting place, tourism and heritage; and supporting voluntary and community groups. Interventions along the Supporting Local Businesses investment priority have been primarily related to investment in energy efficiency and decarbonisation technologies for local businesses, alongside support for entrepreneurship activities and business startups. Finally, the People and Skills investment priority has focused on reducing the skills gap in the area and supporting people to move towards the labour market.

Unit of analysis

The place level evaluation of NUL will focus on the whole local authority (LA) area due to the predominance of LA-wide delivery of interventions and overall small size of NUL. However, some interventions are focused within the market town of Newcastle-under-Lyme and will have a spread across the town area only. It will look across all 3 UKSPF investment priorities that have been shortlisted to the following key themes for the case study (see section 3.1 below for further detail):

• perception of place: culture and heritage
• closing the skills gap
• business innovation and investment
• community investment: health and wellbeing

Methodological approach

The case study will include process, impact and economic evaluation.

Process evaluation

The study will include a process evaluation to answer questions on the relevance, efficiency and effectiveness of fund design and projects, and the efficiency and effectiveness of processes used to manage and deliver the Fund in NUL. The evaluation will include both primary and secondary data collection and analysis, as well as local stakeholder interviews to uncover findings around the key themes of funding design, implementation, delivery and monitoring. The approach to the process evaluation will include:

• a review of the evolution of the local context at the interim and final stages of the evaluation
• analysis of MI to gather evidence on the progress of NUL’s delivery of the programme
• stakeholder and beneficiary qualitative research to explore the set-up and implementation of the UKSPF investment in NUL

Impact evaluation

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

• management information (MI), which will provide data on the progress towards, and achievement of outcomes as outlined in NUL’s Investment Plan
• primary research with stakeholders to capture data on outcomes from the perspective of stakeholders and critically allow exploration of why outcomes have or have not been achieved
• primary research with beneficiaries to allow more in-depth exploration of the outcomes achieved
• there are potential limitations in using secondary data sources e.g. the scale of the activity in NUL. Attribution is also an issue. Nonetheless, many of these datasets (as outlined below) will be able to provide useful contextual information to support the evaluation.

Economic evaluation

The evaluation in NUL 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 projects.

Data to support the evaluation

Primary data collection

Stakeholder consultations and in-depth qualitative work will comprise research with stakeholders (including strategic, operational and frontline stakeholders) and research with beneficiaries (citizens, local business leaders, individuals accessing support, volunteers, Keele and Staffordshire University students and academics). This data collection will capture evidence on the overall delivery and explore in depth the operation and outcomes of interventions and the investment as a whole. To engage the different stakeholder groups, we will employ a range of qualitative approaches, allowing us to offer flexibility in the ways stakeholders participate. This will include individual, paired or small group interviews, and focus groups.

Secondary data sources

Evaluation Themes	Data sources
Perception of place: culture and heritage	■ Local data on footfall collected by Newcastle-under-Lyme. ■ Car park usage data (Number of tickets purchased) ■ Levels of street and environment cleanliness (LEQ survey) ■ MI data collected by Honey Box relating to cultural and creative events. ■ Case studies and data collected by relevant C&P interventions. ■ Community Life survey – key metrics: satisfaction with the local area, whether the area is improving or getting worse, feelings of belonging to the local area.
Closing the skills gap	■ Claimant count data or Annual Population Survey[footnote 4][footnote 5] ■ Keele and Staffordshire University: project level MI data on student placements, innovations (patents – if collected), product designs. ■ MI data collected by The Enterprise Support Coaching on number of individuals supported, coached, workshops etc.
Business innovation and investment	■ Business Structure Database (such as IDBR) – job creation, turnover, productivity, business size[footnote 6]. ■ MI data: Quarterly/ annual reports and data sets. ■ University MI data collection ■ MI data collected by The Enterprise Support Coaching on number of individuals supported, coached, workshops etc. ■ CO2 savings data collected by the Supporting Local Business interventions.
Community investment: Health and wellbeing	■ MI data (quarterly/ annual datasets) ■ ONS Wellbeing statistics[footnote 7] ■ Social media data – number of individuals interacting visiting social media pages ■ Local data on footfall collected by Newcastle-under-Lyme. ■ Total rough sleepers verified in the quarter.

1. NOMIS Population estimates - small area based by single year of age (2023) ↩

2. Accessed here: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/towns-fund ↩

3. Accessed here: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/future-high-streets-fund ↩

4. To note: There may be a small scale of People and Skills activity in NEL that may not be detectable in these datasets ↩

5. Small scale of business support activity in Newcastle-under-Lyme may not be detectable in this dataset ↩

6. ibid ↩

7. ibid ↩