Recovery or stagnation?: Britain’s older industrial towns since the recession

Britain’s older industrial towns have long been known to face economic problems. However, in the aftermath of the recession triggered by the 2008 financial crisis, recorded unemployment in the towns has fallen to relatively low levels. This paper deploys labour market accounts to measure the contributions of changing levels of employment, population, national and international migration, commuting, and labour market participation to the pattern of change in the towns between 2010 to 2016. The paper also places older industrial towns in their regional context by comparing recent trends in the towns with those in the main regional cities, London, and the UK as a whole. The paper concludes that the reduction in recorded unemployment since 2010 paints an overly positive picture of labour market trends in Britain’s older industrial towns

Reducing the compliance burden of nonprofit organisations: cutting red tape

Australian governments now rely on the non-profit sector to provide essential services. Yet, anecdotally, the compliance burden imposed by governments consumes scarce service delivery resources. This study quantifies the cost of government generated paperwork for Queensland non-profit organisations. Fourteen non-profits kept logs to record government paperwork over 12 months. The non-profits also provided their experiences of government paperwork and in particular grant submission and reporting processes. The study finds that government grant paperwork forms the bulk of a non-profits total paperwork burden with grant submissions being the most costly to complete. Costs are clearly regressive with small non-profits bearing a significantly higher burden. Governments need to lead the way and empower the non-profit sector by reducing this administrative burden and releasing the funds for direct service provision

All-Wales Licensed Premises Intervention (AWLPI): a randomised controlled trial of an intervention to reduce alcohol-related violence

Background:Violence in and around premises licensed for the on-site sale and consumption of alcohol continues to burden the NHS with assault-related injuries.Trial design:A randomised controlled trial with licensed premises as the unit of allocation, with additional process and cost-effectiveness evaluations.Methods:Premises were eligible (n = 837) if they were licensed for on-site sale and consumption of alcohol, were within 1 of the 22 local authorities (LAs) in Wales and had previously experienced violence. Data were analysed using Andersen–Gill recurrent event models in an intention-to-treat analysis. An embedded process evaluation examined intervention implementation, reach, fidelity, dose and receipt. An economic evaluation compared costs of the intervention with benefits.Intervention:Premises were randomised to receive a violence-reduction intervention, Safety Management in Licensed Environments (SMILE), which was delivered by an environmental health practitioner (EHP; the agent). SMILE consisted of an initial risk audit to identify known risks of violence, a follow-up audit scheduled to enforce change for premises in which serious risks had been identified, structured advice from EHPs on how risks could be addressed in premises and online materials that provided educational videos and related material.Objective:To develop intervention materials that are acceptable and consistent with EHPs’ statutory remit; to determine the effectiveness of the SMILE intervention in reducing violence; to determine reach, fidelity, dose and receipt of the intervention; and to consider intervention cost-effectiveness.Outcome:Difference in police-recorded violence between intervention and control premises over a 455-day follow-up period.Randomisation:A minimum sample size of 274 licensed premises per arm was required, rounded up to 300 and randomly selected from the eligible population. Licensed premises were randomly assigned by computer to intervention and control arms in a 1 : 1 ratio. Optimal allocation was used, stratified by LA. Premises opening hours, volume of previous violence and LA EHP capacity were used to balance the randomisation. Premises were dropped from the study if they were closed at the time of audit.Results:SMILE was delivered with high levels of reach and fidelity but similar levels of dose to all premises, regardless of risk level. Intervention premises (n = 208) showed an increase in police-recorded violence compared with control premises (n = 245), although results are underpowered. An initial risk audit was less effective than normal practice (hazard ratio = 1.34, 95% confidence interval 1.20 to 1.51) and not cost-effective. Almost all eligible intervention premises (98.6%) received the initial risk audit; nearly 40% of intervention practices should have received follow-up visits but fewer than 10% received one. The intervention was acceptable to EHPs and to some premises staff, but less so for smaller independent premises.Conclusions:SMILE was associated with an increase in police-recorded violence in intervention premises, compared with control premises. A lack of follow-up enforcement visits suggests implementation failure for what was seen as a key mechanism of action. There are also concerns as to the robustness of police data for targeting and assessing outcome effectiveness, while intervention premises may have received greater attention from statutory agencies and, therefore, the identification of more violence than control premises. Although SMILE had high reach and was feasible and acceptable to EHPs, it was found to be ineffective and associated with increased levels of violence, compared with normal practice and it requires additional work to promote the implementation of follow-up enforcement visits. Future work will aim to better understand the role of intervention dose on outcomes and seek more objective measures of violence for use in similar trials

The professionalization of the 'shoe clerk'

The address reviews the professionalization of statisticians working in the regulated world of drug development. The need for statisticians to continue to push the boundaries of their professional environment is stressed. It is argued that to maintain the strength and influence of the profession it is neither desirable, nor necessary, to define in a statutory sense access to the profession. Copyright 2005 Royal Statistical Society.