Relative poverty across Scottish Local Authorities

Important Note

Important Note: Re-classification of figures

Since these figures were published some users have voiced concerns that they do not strongly correlate with some of the other sources currently used as proxy indicators for poverty at LA-level such as the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation Income Domain. This issue was considered at the quality assurance stage of the project to produce these figures, however the SG Income and poverty statistics team have now decided to look at it in more detail in light of these concerns.

Over the coming months the income and poverty statistics team will carry out work to investigate and explain these differences in more detail. We will be investigating why some LAs with high relative poverty rates in the new figures do not have correspondingly high rates of poverty proxies such as SIMD income deprivation. Until this work is complete, these figures will be classified as "data being developed" rather than "Official Statistics". This is an opportunity to look at these statistics in more detail and help to understand how poverty statistics relate to other measures.

We would welcome user involvement in the quality assurance process and would be happy to discuss this work with any users that have comments or suggestions. If you are interested in results for a particular area it may also be possible for us to share the data with you and for you to carry out your own analysis on the dataset involved, with SG support if necessary.

Consistent with the "data being developed" classification more caution than usual should be used in interpretation of these figures. The advice in the "Guidance for using these figures" section of this report should be heeded. Although the ultimate intention of this work will be to get these figures added to the Improvement Service list of indicators for SOAs, until this quality assurance process is complete these figures are not suitable for use in high level official documents such as SOAs or Housing Need and Demand Assessments at this time.