The Context of the Twelve Project Areas

The twelve local areas where CDP teams have been set up were chosen by a process of negotiation between the Home Office and local authorities in which the relative problems of different districts and considerations of political expediency were both relevant. Thus it mighb be thought bad policy to locate the project in areas which had been the target of other government programmes, like the Educational Priority Areas project, or where community groups were already active. There was in ary case inadequate data available to permit a confident choice of areas on the basis of their measured characteristics. The 1966 sample census was well out of date by 1971 or 1972, particularly in redevelopment areas or in districts receiving large numbers of immigrants. Statistics kept by local authorities vary considerably from one authority to another, and in certain fields, particularly the provision of social services, reflect local authority practice more closely than they reflect actual need. Crucial economic indicators, such as income levels and unemployment rates, tend not to be available for small areas. Beyond all these problems there is the unanswerable question of what weight should be given to the different aspects of deprivation. The Home Office was therefore probably wise to avoid the pretence that areas could be chosen for an experiment like CDP by their scores on a quantifiable index of need.