The Challenge
Across the country people are facing unprecedented financial pressures amid the ongoing cost-of-living crisis. For local councils, understanding exactly where support is needed most can be challenging.
East Renfrewshire Council recognised the need for clearer, more timely insight into the financial wellbeing of its residents. Traditional data sources, such as benefit claims or service uptake, while useful, often lag behind real-world changes and do not always capture the full picture. These sources also miss details of households who don’t meet the threshold for benefits, but might still be experiencing financial challenges.
The Approach
To address this, East Renfrewshire Council partnered with Smart Data Foundry to harness new forms of financial data in a new way and improve its understanding of the challenges facing residents.
Using its key data partnership with NatWest Group, Smart Data Foundry developed the Economic Wellbeing Explorer powered by a weekly feed of anonymised transactions from current account users in East Renfrewshire.
The tool combines key financial wellbeing indicators – such as income level and source, disposable income, and overdraft use – with contextual local data including school attainment, and council provided data such as requests for financial advice, and receipt of free school meals.
The data is deidentified and aggregated, ensuring that no individual or household can be identified, while still allowing the Council to pinpoint areas where there are higher levels of financial distress. The result is a comprehensive view of local economic wellbeing which can help the Council direct resources more effectively.
The Impact
The Economic Wellbeing Explorer has provided East Renfrewshire Council with a comprehensive, near real-time view of local economic wellbeing. It has already delivered valuable insights, including:
- Confirming poverty in known areas, as well as revealing signs of financial vulnerability in ‘traditionally affluent’ areas
- Providing insight into patterns of overdraft use and living beyond means in communities where uptake of financial advice and receipt of free school meals was low
- Allowing the Council to target emerging areas of need earlier, before financial struggles escalated
These insights are influencing decision-making and enabling resources to be directed more effectively, ensuring that support reaches the people who need it most.
Looking Ahead
The Council is continuing to use the Economic Wellbeing Explorer to track changes over time, monitor the effectiveness of interventions, and identify new areas of vulnerability. This approach, along with other data work, is helping to build more proactive, data-informed decision-making, with a stronger focus on prevention as well as response.
In the Council's Words
We are committed to tackling child poverty in East Renfrewshire. As part of this commitment, we are continually working to improve our understanding of the circumstances of families in, or at risk of, poverty. The Economic Wellbeing Explorer complements other data work in helping us understand the profile of families we hope to support.
The Economic Wellbeing Explorer has influenced decision-making around how and where we deliver supports, such as the Thrive Under 5 project. As the dashboard highlighted widespread need, we took the decision to open this project to families from any part of the authority and not just limit it to the most deprived areas. This has meant families who might not previously have been known to us have been supported by the project.
We will continue to use the Economic Wellbeing Explorer to monitor changes by area, age, income level or over time. This will allow us to best understand need and make informed decisions based on the needs of our residents.
Smart Data Foundry Perspective
Dougie Robb, CEO at Smart Data Foundry, said:
At Smart Data Foundry, we believe financial data is one of the most powerful resources we have to create meaningful change. When used effectively, it unlocks insights that enable earlier intervention, smarter targeting of support, and policies that make a real difference to people’s lives.
Our work with East Renfrewshire Council demonstrated the potential of using financial data in this way, and we have since rolled the approach out across Scotland and into the rest of Great Britain. We look forward to working with policymakers and service providers to ensure these insights continue to shape resources, improve services, and deliver greater impact for communities.
What is the Economic Wellbeing Explorer?
The Economic Wellbeing Explorer is Smart Data Foundry’s map-based insights tool, allowing governments, NGOs, policy teams, and service providers to explore trends and themes in economic wellbeing at a national, regional and local level. This helps users make informed decisions that drive impactful change—reducing poverty, tackling inequality, and improving overall economic wellbeing.
Learn more