£250,000 is set to be invested in helping less well-off members of the community in the Westfield, Clifton, Guildhall, Heworth and Hull Road wards. The wards are among the lowest ranked using a national “Index of Multiple Deprivation” (IMD). The project will last for two years.

In some ways, the project will seek to emulate the Kingsway Project, of the last decade, which did achieve some success in getting residents to apply for the benefits to which they were entitled. Paradoxically a low score in the IMD is influenced by the number of claimants – meaning that the more successful a benefits campaign is, the lower the score will be!

Some neighbourhoods – such as Chapelfields – have relatively small numbers of retired people and are less likely to be regarded as “deprived” using the national definitions.  However, the Council is, rightly, intending to roll out its project across the whole of the Westfield ward

A key target for any project like this must be to get more people into work. In KIngsway this proved to be difficult because of the large proportion of elderly and retired people in the area. These days the high employment level in the City means that there are a lot of jobs around so progress may be possible for the long term unemployed.

The Council has produced a summary of the key indicators of “deprivation” (below).  Many of these are unlikely to show a measurable improvement over just a couple of years (life expectancy being one example).

Instead of setting measurable  firm targets, the Council says, “Social Return on Investment produces a description of how a project creates value and a ratio that states how much social value in £s is created for every £ of investment”.

This is the management speak equivalent of Voodoo.