Created
by Scottish Government, Carnegie UK Trust, University of Stirling, Scotland’s
Towns Partnership, and the Centre for Local Economic Strategies
14/02/2017
A comprehensive upgrade to
an innovative data tool providing in-depth information on Scotland’s towns was
unveiled outside the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh today.
Senior
representatives of the University of Stirling, Carnegie UK Trust, and
Scotland’s Towns Partnership met to raise awareness of the benefits of the
Understanding Scottish Places (USP) tool for all those interested in our towns.
Minister for Local Government and Housing, Kevin Stewart MSP, and the Centre
for Local Economic Strategies, also endorsed the launch.
Understanding
Scottish Places allows users to view the social and economic profile of their
town, and compare this with other towns in Scotland. Data is included for all
towns in Scotland with a population of above 1,000: 479 in total. Rather than
rank places as ‘better’ or ‘worse’, USP focuses on shared characteristics, and
well as employing a unique ‘independent to dependent’ scale.
At
today’s launch, the organisations behind USP unveiled the first comprehensive
upgrade to the tool since its creation in 2015. In addition to the social,
economic and demographic data previously available, users can now view
information such as daily commuter flows, tourist accommodation capacity, and
the amount of grant funding received by their town.
Furthermore,
each town now has a unique description of its history, geography and economy. It
is hoped that the new features will further enhance USP’s utility in supporting
the development and regeneration of Scottish towns.
Since
its introduction in 2015, USP has been used over 10,000 times by professionals,
local organisations and other towns stakeholders to support their work. The
tool is freely accessible to the public, and has been developed by a consortium
of organisations comprising Scottish Government, Carnegie UK Trust, University
of Stirling, Scotland’s Towns Partnership, and the Centre for Local Economic
Strategies.
The
tool has also been used in over 20 in-depth USP Your Town Audits, a
comprehensive study which builds upon the USP output to give an individual town
a much wider appreciation and understanding of its role, function and performance. The
USP Your Town Audit has now become the standard benchmark for measuring the
health of a Scottish town.
The
USP Consortium now looks forward to receiving user feedback on USP 2, and to
developing a further upgrade to USP later in the year.
Kevin Stewart MSP,
Minister for Local Government and Housing, commented:
“The
Scottish Government is committed to helping Scotland’s towns by supporting
regeneration, developing sustainable economies, improving energy efficiency and
tackling fuel poverty.
“We
have been closely involved in the creation of this new version of Understanding
Scottish Places. I’m delighted it’s now available for use by all those who work
to improve Scotland’s towns.
“There
is some fascinating information on this website and I would encourage both
professionals and members of the public to visit usp.scot to see how the tool
could be used to benefit their local area. Its new features will support
efforts to create flourishing places for all those who live, work in and visit
our towns.”
Professor Leigh Sparks,
Deputy Principal of the University of Stirling, said:
“Two
years ago we launched Understanding Scottish Places, which for the first time
provided consistent and comparable data across 479 towns in Scotland. This
unique resource has been informing decision making and debates about towns and
town centre development across the country. We are now delighted to launch a
major update of the site with enhanced data and functionality. The Institute
for Retail Studies at the University of Stirling has been proud to be involved
in USP from its conception and is committed to maintaining its integrity and
usefulness.”
Gina Wilson,
Development Manager of Carnegie UK Trust said:
“Carnegie
UK Trust is proud to have supported the development of this latest phase of
Understanding Scottish Places. We know from the feedback received that USP is
responding to a real need among all towns stakeholders for in-depth,
comparative data on towns. We look forward to hearing from users about their
experience of the new features in USP, which we believe will continue to
support the creation of successful, inclusive places across Scotland”.
Phil Prentice, Chief
Officer of Scotland’s Towns Partnership said:
“Understanding
Scottish Places is an evolving tool that makes the most of data to inspire
better decisions. We would now welcome suggestions
from users as to what the next upgrade could contain. We would also welcome
data providers and partners to support us to take this valuable data platform
even further"
Neil McInroy (Chief
Executive) and Matthew Jackson (Deputy Chief Executive) of the Centre for Local
Economic Strategies said:
“The
key to progressive local economic development is for towns to understand using
evidence the extent to which they are independent or dependent on others for
the provision of services or the assets available in that town. USP 2 handily
helps towns to understand their levels of independence, inter-dependence or
dependence and thus shape their own local economic approach accordingly;
meaning that economic strategy is rooted in the town itself and not pre-conceived
and orthodox approaches”.
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