How the New Index of Multiple Deprivation Can Improve Social Value Delivery

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

If you’re a social value manager or bid manager responsible for creating a social value plan, understanding where to focus your efforts is essential. Different areas of your community — or the country — have different needs, and knowing how to identify them is the first step. This is where the Indices of Deprivation become invaluable. Below, we explain what they are, how to use them, and how they’re built into your Thrive software and the Impact Evaluation Standard to make social value planning easier and more effective.

English Indices of Deprivation 2025

On October 30 this year, the government released the English Indices of Deprivation 2025 (IoD25), comparing relative levels of deprivation against seven different measures in 33,755 small areas (Lower-layer Super Output Areas or LSOAs) across the country. 

This is the first time this data has been updated comprehensively since 2019 and some of the methodology used has been substantially reworked since then. 

With the PPN 002 Social Value Model re-emphasising the need for contracting authorities and suppliers to focus their efforts on addressing local needs in their social value work, this statistical release is set to play a huge part – alongside local engagement – in helping to shape the benefits that communities see from public procurement. 

Why this Matters for Social Value

Focusing social value on local needs and deprivation enables public spending to deliver more bang per buck. Local deprivation data helps contracting authorities and suppliers to pinpoint the neediest areas and the types of help they require. 

The need for local angles is stressed repeatedly in the Social Value Model. 

For example, subcriteria under MAC 3b (Collaborate in co-design and delivery with communities and anchor partners) include: 

Activities that demonstrate and describe the supplier’s existing or planned: 

• Understanding of local demographics, needs and opportunities for the co-design of the goods, services and works to be delivered under the contract 
• Methods for engaging with different parts of the community (including the education system and charities representing the community) and how communities come together to inform decisions, strategy and projects to leave a positive legacy for future generations. Illustrative examples: engagement events; awareness campaigns and outreach activities; focus groups; ‘anchor institutions’ such as educational establishments and health trusts; Local Economic Partnerships (LEPs); charities; industry or community representative bodies 
• Measures to involve local stakeholders and/or users in design (e.g. in the design of services, systems, products or buildings) 

Being able to identify unmet needs at the very granular, seven-dimensional LSOA level makes the Indices of English Deprivation 2025 essential reading for anyone involved in social value. 

But working out what would most benefit an area is not simply a matter of consulting a list of data! 

Engagement with affected communities in advance of putting any contract or bid together (Preliminary Market Engagement) is a central plank of the social value system as well. We’ve written in depth about how to get the best out of Preliminary Market Engagement here. 

The Thrive platform incorporates comprehensive local needs data and tools to help social value professionals make the most of it. We’ll take a look at that later in this article. But first, let’s explore the indices themselves and what they measure. 

What Are the Seven Indices?

“Deprivation” is not a monolithic concept. It encompasses different angles and different types of unmet needs, of which a lack of money is just one. 

The seven individual indices shown are combined in line with the respective weightings below to produce the overall Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD). 

Source: Ministry of Housing, Communities, and Local Government

As you can see, Income and Employment are the biggest factors – constituting nearly half (45%) of the total measurement. But the other five indices add a wide variety of other considerations in determining overall living conditions. 

The specific indicators used to calculate each of these indices were changed significantly from 2019 to 2025. You can view all 55 (including those which are new and which are changed) in the table below, taken from the release’s accompanying Technical Report.  

Source: Ministry of Housing, Communities, and Local Government

What are LSOAs?

A Lower-layer Super Output Area (LSOA) is a geographic unit defined by the Office for National Statistics comprising around 1,000 to 3,000 individuals or 400 to 1,200 households. LSOAs combine multiple Output Areas to form segments that enable detailed reporting without risking individual privacy. 

There are 33,755 LSOAs in England and the IMD rates each on one a scale from “Most Deprived” to “Least Deprived”. As the map below shows, pockets of deprivation can co-exist alongside relatively affluent neighbourhoods as well as being concentrated in certain areas. 

Source: Ministry of Housing, Communities, and Local Government

• According to the data, the most deprived LSOA in England is the Jaywick and St Osyth area of Clacton-on-Sea in Tendring (Tendring 018a) – as it has been in every IMD released since 2010
• Seven of the ten most deprived areas are in Blackpool
• 226 of the 10% most deprived LSOAs (3,375) rate “highly deprived” or worse on six of the seven individual indices. Of these, 78 are concentrated in just ten local authority areas, with Liverpool alone home to 20
• While urban areas are more likely overall to be highly deprived, there are many deprived rural LSOAs – with “Housing in poor condition” being a much more prevalent indicator of deprivation in the countryside compared to towns and cities

Source: Ministry of Housing, Communities, and Local Government

Thrive’s Local Needs Analysis Tool

How can social value professionals go about managing so much data? And how can they use it to work out what kinds of intervention will deliver impact?

Well, the Thrive platform has the answer – in its Local Needs Analysis tool. This lets you drill down to the postcode or LSOA level to see how an area rates against the various indices. 

But the real value lies in the Thrive recommendations that are provided. 

For any given area, users are presented with an extensive list of:

• Suggested social value-generating activities and the reasons why they create social value – from creating training opportunities in low-skill areas to reducing CO2 emissions where air pollution levels are high
• A score from 1 to 5, indicating how much impact each activity could be expected to have in that area
• Which Domains of Deprivation and Impact Evaluation Standard metrics these activities would contribute to

Oh – and did we mention that the Impact Evaluation Standard (the independent framework of metrics that underpins the Thrive platform) has just undergone a comprehensive update to incorporate all of the changes PPN 002 and the new Social Value Model have brought in? 

You can find out more about that and the other new functionality we added in October here. 

At Thrive we specialise in helping companies track, measure and amplify their social value in line with the Social Value Model. If you want to discover how you can measure your social value more effectively and report to stakeholders quickly, don’t hesitate to contact us. We’d love to help you uncover more opportunities to showcase your impact.