The Challenge: Understanding Community Asset Impact

For parish and town councils, understanding how community assets and events truly impact local residents has always been a significant challenge. Whether it's a new skate park, a heritage trail, or a community festival, councils need to answer crucial questions: How many people are using these facilities? Who benefits from them? Are we delivering real value for our investments? These insights are essential for making informed decisions about future investments, protecting valuable community spaces, and demonstrating value to stakeholders.

Traditional Measurement Methods and Their Limitations

Historically, councils have relied on various methods to gauge community impact:

• Manual counting and observation
• Visitor surveys and questionnaires
• Ticket sales for events
• Booking system data
• Footfall counters
• Anecdotal feedback

While these methods provide some insights, they come with significant limitations. Manual counting is resource-intensive and only provides snapshots of usage. Surveys often have low response rates and can be biased. Ticket sales and booking data miss informal or casual use. Most importantly, these traditional methods struggle to capture the broader picture of how communities interact with spaces over time.

A Modern Solution: Movement Data Analytics

The proliferation of smartphone technology has opened up new possibilities for understanding community behavior at scale. Through GPS signals generated by mobile devices - with 92% of the UK population using smartphones - we can now build a comprehensive picture of how people move through and use community spaces.

At ActiveXchange, we analyse data from approximately 50,000 apps, tracking around 20 million unique devices across the UK. This creates an unprecedented opportunity to understand community space usage while maintaining strict privacy and GDPR compliance.

Real-World Applications: From Data to Impact

With a wide and varied customer-base across the UK, there are a range of existing applications of these insights which may resonate with town and parish councils:

Validating Infrastructure Investments

A real example from North Walsham demonstrated how movement data could validate community investment decisions. After installing a new £190,000 skate park in February 2022, the council could track usage patterns over time, showing increased activity in the area and helping justify the significant investment.

Supporting Biodiversity Projects

One parish council representative shared their challenge of justifying a £15,000 biodiversity study for a public footpath on a former railway line. Movement data could help demonstrate the path's current usage patterns and value to the community, making it easier to explain such investments to residents.

Heritage Trail Engagement

Another council had recently launched a heritage trail with 20 different locations around their town. Movement data analytics could help them understand if visitors are completing the entire trail, which locations are most popular, and how patterns of engagement change over time.

Addressing Community Safety

One council was interested in understanding patterns of High Street usage to address antisocial behaviour concerns. While maintaining strict privacy protocols, movement data could help identify patterns of space usage over time, helping inform community safety strategies.

Protecting Valuable Spaces

During our discussion, council members recognized the potential for using movement data to protect informal community spaces. When faced with development pressures, councils can now provide objective evidence of how communities use seemingly "empty" spaces, such as fields used regularly for dog walking or recreation.

Making Data-Driven Decisions

The power of movement data lies in its ability to turn anecdotal evidence into objective insights. For example, one authority used visitor origin data to make informed decisions about car park charging after discovering that more than 50% of visitors came from outside their local authority boundary. This kind of objective evidence helps councils:

• Support funding applications with concrete usage data
• Make informed decisions about facility improvements
• Demonstrate the value of community investments
• Understand patterns of community engagement
• Plan more effective services and events

Privacy and Ethics

All our data analysis is conducted with strict privacy protocols. The data is non-personally identifiable and fully GDPR compliant. While we can provide powerful insights about how spaces are used, we never track or identify individuals. Instead, we work with aggregated data to understand patterns and trends that can inform better community planning and investment decisions.

Looking Ahead

As councils face increasing pressure to make evidence-based decisions and demonstrate the value of their investments, movement data analytics offers a powerful new tool for understanding and improving community spaces. Whether you're planning new facilities, applying for grants, or working to protect valuable community assets, having objective data about how people use your spaces can make a significant difference in serving your community effectively.

Learn More About Movement Data Analytics

Interested in understanding how movement data could help your council make better decisions?

Visit ActiveXchange to learn more about our solutions, or contact me directly at benj@activexchange.co.uk to discuss your specific needs. We're offering special pricing options for parish and town councils, including potential collaborative arrangements to make these insights more accessible for smaller communities.

Ben Jones is the General Manager at ActiveXchange, a company specializing in movement data analytics across Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the UK. The company works with organizations ranging from national governing bodies to local councils, helping them understand and quantify their community impact.

Watch the Full Webinar

Want to dive deeper into how movement data can transform your community planning? Watch our detailed webinar recording below:

In this session, you'll learn:

• Detailed explanations of movement data technology
• Live demonstrations of the analytics platform
• Real examples from councils across the UK

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