By Chris Riches, Programme Lead at South Cambridgeshire District Council
A phrase often heard in local government is “let’s not reinvent the wheel”. Sometimes, it’s true; if a project has already worked well elsewhere, we absolutely should take inspiration from this.
More often than not however, this phrase manifests itself as a blocker of innovation. Councils can be reluctant to change their processes unless another authority has done so with success, leaving a reluctance to try new ways of working just because no other council has.
In my own work, this issue is most pertinent when looking at new ways to use data to support low-income households. My role at South Cambridgeshire District Council is entirely focused on how we can use existing data differently to better support our residents.
We use a software platform called the Low-Income Family Tracker (LIFT) that takes existing benefits data on low-income households to identify missed benefit claims and help us target our support more effectively. Since we started using the platform in November 2024, we have secured a projected £6.1m in additional income for residents in South Cambridgeshire. This includes getting nearly 150 households onto Pension Credit that weren’t previously claiming, running a Healthy Start take up campaign that saw us achieve the highest increase in Healthy Start claimants in the country, and running a number of in-person events that saw 192 people attend.
Throughout the programme we have tried to push the boundaries on what we previously thought was possible but are often blocked by different people’s interpretation of GDPR. When coupled with the attitude of not reinventing the wheel, the ability to use data in new ways to work more effectively becomes even harder.
More often than not, “GDPR” becomes a shorthand for “we can’t do this”, without stopping to ask whether there is a way that we could. Across local government, we hold a plethora of information about the people we serve. We know who is receiving certain benefits, who is on a low income, who is struggling with their Council Tax, and where people live. And whilst we hold all this information, it is often other organisations that hold the final pieces of the puzzle.
One organisation might know that a family is on a low income. Another might know whether they are receiving a particular form of support. Another might know that they previously tried to claim support but were unsuccessful. Whilst these datasets tell us something on their own, put together they can tell us a lot more.
As a District Council, we can see which of our low-income residents are eligible for certain benefits and support, but without matching up to other data sources, we’re unable to identify who is eligible for and not claiming, making a targeted campaign all the more difficult.
A key area we wanted to tackle this issue for was Free School Meals. In a two-tier Council area although the District Council can see who is eligible, it is only once matched against the County Council’s data on who is already claiming that it’s possible to identify those missing out.
After a long time trying, we were able to find a way forward. In October last year, we became one of the first two-tier Council areas in the country to run a joint campaign by sharing data to increase take up of Free School Meals. The small pilot project resulted in an additional 81 children now claiming Free School Meals, with over £100,000 a year of additional Pupil Premium funding secured for local schools in the process.
In the early planning stages of that project, the biggest blocker was “GDPR”. Not a specific part of GDPR, just the notion and perception of the regulations. But GDPR doesn’t say you can’t share data; it provides a framework to share data responsibly and legally. Instead of stopping at the first mention of this, we worked through what we needed to do to make it possible and did something that improved the lives of over 80 children in the district.
So next time someone says “let’s not reinvent the wheel”, perhaps we should remember that not having a precedent shouldn’t be a reason to not try something new. There is a lot to be said for learning from what others have done, but if we want to do things differently, someone has to be prepared to go first.
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