§ Lord RookerMy honourable friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State has made the following Written Ministerial Statement.
Today I am publishing revised tables for the Indices of Deprivation 2004. The index is based on a total of 37 indicators and the tables published on 28 April contained two errors.
IMD 2004 is a major improvement on previous deprivation indices, introducing two new domains—crime and living environment—and a very significant new small area geography: super output areas. It makes available a much better evidence base to improve policy making and delivery at all levels. But these improvements make it a much more complex index to produce. Despite a long and very detailed period of consultation, and extensive prepublication checks, there have been some teething troubles. I very much regret that these errors have occurred.
The errors occurred in creating the two new domains in the index—living environment and crime. In the former, one set of data was input in the wrong rank order. In the latter, there was a technical error in the way in which the data were smoothed to deal with inaccuracies introduced by small numbers of particular crimes.
These errors have now been corrected, and very extensive checks have been made both by the contractors, and at the request of Ministers by independent experts, to ensure as far as possible that there are no further such errors in the index. I have placed revised tables in the Library.
35WSThe revised tables show changes in the rankings both of individual local authorities, and of the new small super output areas. The most significant of these is that Ashfield has moved out of the list of authorities which are in the top 50 on at least one of the district level measures in the index, while Hammersmith and Fulham rejoins that list.
The new tables are also being placed being on the department's website.