Governments and organisations worldwide are increasingly accepting that public management premised narrowly on income, efficiency, and productivity does not deliver holistic quality of life for citizens. ‘Wellbeing public policy (WPP)’ is a new paradigm with this more holistic objective. Yet WPP remains dominated by technocratic and top-down approaches which overlook the nuance of variation in priorities across people and places. Effective WPP requires a people- and place-based approach to tangibly improve people’s lives.
London’s first Wellbeing and Sustainability Measure has been developed by the Greater London Authority’s (GLA) City Intelligence. This follows a mayoral manifesto commitment to establish a new measure of wellbeing in London as the core indicator of the city’s success as a place to live and work.
This multidimensional framework of what a good quality of life looks like goes beyond economic measures of success to capture the things that matter most to Londoners. These values were discerned following an 18-month period of in-depth participatory research. The framework encompasses seven domains – following the language used by Londoners – related to good health, employment opportunities, decent housing, environmental quality, social connectedness, financial security, and accessible spaces. These domains are associated with 64 indicators, covering both objective and subjective aspects of wellbeing.
The London Wellbeing and Sustainability Framework
Developed by City Intelligence (2023). Visit https://apps.london.gov.uk/wellbeing/ to explore the Measure and https://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/draft-london-wellbeing-and-sustainability-measure to read about the participatory research process.
The case for a place-based approach
Wellbeing frameworks are increasingly common globally. Famous examples of governments and international bodies measuring progress beyond traditional economic indicators include the OECD’s Better Life Initiative, the UK ONS’ Measures of National Wellbeing, and the New Zealand Living Standards Framework. As well as going beyond traditional indicators like Gross Domestic Product (GDP), these frameworks go beyond national distributions when thinking about inequalities. Moving away from a ‘view from nowhere’ approach to policymaking, there is growing recognition of the need for action to be targeted and bespoke to places and domains of policy. This reflects the unique way spatial and demographic inequalities manifest in each place – whether economically, geographically, culturally or historically.
Within the UK, the London Wellbeing and Sustainability Measure marks a major step in championing this contextualist approach. With the advice of an independent advisory group, City Intelligence proactively chose place-specificity over generalisability. With the ONS producing regionally comparable statistics on objective and subjective measures of wellbeing, the focus in London is on the specific needs of the city and its residents, and the framework is not intended to be replicable in another context (though the approach to generating it is). For example, innovative data sources specific to London, such as the Tranquil City Index, have been used that would not have been possible at a higher geography. London is a unique city for many reasons, but to acknowledge a few:
- London is the most ethnically diverse and the youngest region in England and Wales
- London has a higher proportion of households at the bottom and at the top of the income distribution compared to the rest of the UK
- London has some of the highest after-housing-costs poverty rates in the UK
- Londoners report the lowest life satisfaction among regions in England
Understanding and addressing these issues through WPP requires a place-specific approach.
…And a people-based approach
Most WPP to date has adopted a ‘social planner’ approach where standardised metrics developed at the national level are used to frame and evaluate policy. Rhetorically, WPP is presented as a technocratic shift in metrics, rather than a political shift in values. We argue that this approach should be complemented by or even secondary to a ‘citizen approach’ to ensure ethical and political legitimacy. This is because wellbeing – what makes a life go well – is a ‘thick concept’, meaning that it both describes and evaluates. It can be analysed using the tools of science and philosophy, but the definition of wellbeing requires a value judgement. In liberal democracies, this should be left to the people. As the nuances of how people think about wellbeing and policy to improve tends to shift between contexts, the design of place-based wellbeing frameworks requires participatory input from citizens.
The pandemic offered a unique opportunity for many of us to reflect on what matters in life and we were reminded of the importance of connecting with friends and family, accessing nature, and looking after our physical and mental health. Similar themes consistently emerge from wellbeing research – we know that basic material needs need to be met and autonomy secured, that having connections with friends, family, and community is important, and that physical and mental health have a strong influence on wellbeing. However, there are more specific concerns to living well in certain places and for certain groups which can only become apparent and policy attention paid with deeper research and often deeper qualitative research to understand people’s concerns. For example, in recent work with community groups in Edinburgh, we have observed that charity shops tend to locate in wealthy neighbourhoods where they get generous donations and can make strong sales. This deprives impoverished neighbourhoods of access to the cheap household goods they need from these shops.
The mixed methods approach that went into developing the London Wellbeing and Sustainability Measure was a concerted effort to listen to a range of perspectives and incorporate these needs into the framework.
To summarise the development process:
These stages, guided by an independent advisory group, allowed diverse stakeholders to be involved in the development of the London wellbeing measure through a variety of modes. For example, community engagement sessions leveraged qualitative and participatory research methods and constituted a concerted effort to incorporate the views of under-served and under-represented groups in London, including Iraqi Londoners, Bangladeshi Londoners, Gypsy and Traveller communities, black women from low-income backgrounds, and individuals who attend food banks, among others. The online public consultation held on the GLA’s Talk London platform included open-ended short-answer questions as well as a quantitative survey. 67% of respondents agreed with the contents of the draft measure. The research process demonstrates the ability to incorporate a diversity of methods to gauge the breadth and depth of public opinion and assemble a rich and rigorous evidence base for a wellbeing framework.
There were many findings from the research process that illuminated the unique values and concerns of Londoners. Londoners appreciate the diversity of their local areas and high streets, citing easy access to services and amenities in their neighbourhoods as important for their wellbeing. London’s housing crisis, which includes affordability, quality, overcrowding, and poor security, has a significant impact on people’s quality of life.
While not unique to London, residents were aware of stark geographical inequalities across the city and inequalities in who experienced discrimination and prejudice. People reported differential access to local services and amenities and differential treatment depending on ethnicity, race, and migration status. Participants in the research recognised these issues as a major barrier to living well in London. They also reported the significance of spatial inequalities – not just inner/outer London, or by borough, but by neighbourhood and even street level. At the GLA, we’ve tried to represent these concerns by retaining the language used in the participatory process in the framework and developing a data tool which enables filtering by demographic sub-group where possible, such as age, sex, ethnicity, Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) quintile, Free School Meal (FSM) status and more. By focusing on place rather than comparability, we’re able to highlight inequalities in more depth than regionally comparable wellbeing frameworks allow.
Key takeaways from the London approach
Wellbeing frameworks are increasingly being developed and used by policymakers. This is part of a bigger shift in public policy and public management beyond income, prices, efficiency, productivity and other traditional economic objectives to focus on the diverse outcomes that matter to people, including embedding environmental sustainability. This shift can be enhanced by the utilisation of place- and people-based methodologies, but we acknowledge that both the shift and these methodologies come with difficulties. There will always be a trade-off between focusing on the needs and challenges of a particular place and its population and propelling the wellbeing agenda forward through a common evidence base and a universal language that allows for comparability. This remains one of the principle appeals of the traditional economic approach. The London Wellbeing and Sustainability Measure, while context-specific, was developed using a scalable process that can co-exist and supplement regionally comparable measures like the ONS’ national framework.
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Originally published at Cambridge's Bennett Institute for Public Policy blog, here: https://www.bennettinstitute.cam.ac.uk/blog/measuring-wellbeing-in-london/
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