Covid-19 Analysis:

Beginning to understand the impact on our vulnerable residents

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Data & Insight @ HackIT

20 March 2020

Context

The Covid-19 pandemic will have far-reaching impacts across Hackney and the rest of the country. The Data & Insight team want to help colleagues understand the scale of the problem and identify residents most vulnerable to the effects of Covid-19 so that we can do our best to support our communities.

This briefing pack is our initial attempt to provide insight about the Covid-19 pandemic, but we know that services will have more specific needs. As we refine our model and add new datasets, data will be subject to change.

This briefing pack will cover...

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1. What we know about people / households who are particularly vulnerable to Covid-19 as an illness
• Single adult households, over 70s living alone and receiving Adult Social Care support; other over 70s living alone in the borough; and disabled people living alone

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• What we know about people / households who are particularly vulnerable to the expected economic impact of Covid-19
• The number of households we estimate to be living in the private rented sector and on low incomes; the proportion of Council tenants and those in the social rented sector who are on low incomes; businesses in Hackney

Methodology

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To build a live view of our most vulnerable residents in Hackney, we have joined together data at a property level, using the Unique Property Reference Number (UPRN) from our master address database (the LLPG). We have identified data fields that will help us better understand residents living at a property in terms of vulnerability. The data sources joined so far include:

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Council data:

• Housing benefit
• Council tax
• Hackney Homes
• Electoral Register
• BRE report (2017)
• Local Land and Property Gazetteer
• Adult Social Care
• Children’s & Families Services
• Assisted bulky waste collections

External data:

• Land Registry price paid
• Energy Performance Certificates
• Tenancy Deposits

We also intend to add:

• Parking data
• Tenancy sustainment data
• Free School Meals
• People living in temporary accommodation (not self-contained) with underlying health condition

What this joined-up dataset looks like

Built within Qlik, each row refers to a single residential property within Hackney, identified by its UPRN. Multiple columns build up a picture of each property.

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COLUMNS

ROWS

Context of the data we are working with

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• Data has been updated this week and is up-to-date @20/03/20. However, data quality may vary across systems and we’re continuing to expand the data included so figures are subject to change.
• Data is joined on the Unique Property Reference Number (UPRN), so there are is risk of misjoining households if data is not up to date on systems.
• Data is for properties within Hackney, so Hackney residents currently living out-of-borough (for example, in temporary accommodation provided by Hackney) are not included.
• Whilst our data can tell us a lot about our residents, we will have many residents who might only appear on Council Tax or the Electoral Register, or in some cases are not included on any of our datasets; we won’t know therefore much about their income status, whether there are children within the household or that they are resident within the borough.

Vulnerable households with one adult

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Our analysis estimates that in total, there are around 12,500 households in Hackney with only one adult (either a single person or lone parent) who are particularly vulnerable because:

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• they are aged 70 or over;
• the adult or a child in the household has a known disability or health condition (identified through receipt of disability-related benefits, council tax discounts or assisted bulky waste collection);
• Council Tax has identified them as a vulnerable household - generally due to old age, a health condition or disability; or
• the household is in receipt of Adult Social Care.

Over 70s living alone

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Over 70s living alone - risks

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We know ASC and Housing are already responding to support their most vulnerable clients. We believe the biggest areas of risk within this group are...

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• The large number of over 70s who we believe live alone who don’t currently receive social care support from us (4,620 people). Not everyone in this group will be unsupported by other networks or necessarily contract Covid-19 but social isolation could have a big impact on residents who have been ‘just getting by’ and place considerable extra demand on ASC.

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Over 70s living alone - risks

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• Over 70s living alone who are disabled or have a health condition but are not currently known to ASC (around 970 people) who again, could be particularly vulnerable to a loss of support networks and social isolation. These are people who could potentially approach ASC in the coming weeks looking for more support as they isolate.

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• Over 70s living alone on a low income (4,070) - Hackney has some of the highest pensioner poverty in the whole of England and Wales and this group are potentially very vulnerable to food shortages and any associated food price inflation.

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Disabled people living alone

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Disabled people living alone - risks

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We’ve identified this cohort by looking at people in receipt of disability-related benefits, council tax discounts or assisted bulky waste collection.

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We know that disabled people or those with a limiting long-term health condition are already susceptible to feelings of isolation and loneliness which is likely to be exacerbated by Covid-19 social isolation measures. Sense UK says that 50% of disabled people say they are lonely, with 1 in 4 feeling lonely every day. The British Red Cross puts those with a disability or long-standing health condition in a high risk category for social isolation and loneliness.

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There also a chance that local formal and informal support networks might be compromised putting additional pressure on this group of people.

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Households / businesses who are vulnerable to the expected economic impact of Covid-19

Households in the Private Rented Sector

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Social tenants across Hackney

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Self-employed residents

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• It is estimated that around 25,000 Hackney residents are self-employed - equivalent to 1 in 6 Hackney workers (ONS Annual Population Survey 2018/19 via NOMIS).
• Around 2,050 households with a self-employed adult are already on relatively low incomes, and are receiving HB and/or CTS.
• Self-employed workers are particularly vulnerable to the economic impact of Covid-19, as they are not currently eligible for Statutory Sick Pay and their businesses are likely to lose trade. They may, however, be able to access new guaranteed loans and grants for small businesses.

Risks for these groups

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For PRS, social tenants and self-employed residents who are in low paid and unstable work in the gig economy or service industries are another category of resident who may be ‘just getting by’.

• We expect residents in these groups who are out of work to struggle with food shortages and inflation but those who are in work but on low incomes are very vulnerable to the economic consequences of Covid-19

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• Poor living conditions increasing likelihood of Covid-19 spread - our work to predict the location of licensed HMOs tells us that there are likely to be an additional 2,000-3,000 unlicensed HMOs in the borough beyond the 2,300 licenced. This means there could be a significant amount of residents on lower incomes living in properties that also do not meet legal standards which seek to protect individual’s health and welfare (Shelter, UK).

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Businesses in Hackney

*Inter-Departmental Business Register, 2019 & internal Revenues data

There are around 11,000 businesses in Hackney operating from rate-paying premises (52% of all businesses).

Businesses - risks

• Hackney has a diverse range of businesses, however, our top three sectors are ‘Professional, scientific & technical’ (26.34%); ‘Information & communication’ (19.44%) and ‘Arts, entertainment, recreation’ (7.28%)
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• Due to ongoing restrictions on entertainment venues, gatherings and retail businesses alongside the potential of further localised lockdown measures, our micro service businesses are economically very vulnerable to a huge drop in footfall which could have a huge knock on effect on the staff they employ.

*ONS UK business counts data, 2019

How to make use of our

detailed data work

We need to work together

Building a single picture of what we know about our vulnerable residents across the whole of the organisation can seem daunting. The work we’ve done here to collate this information has given us a starting point for a central, single source of truth. This includes names and addresses of the people we have identified and what flags them as vulnerable.

This means we’re now in an excellent position to share this with services who need access to this information and to continue to build out this data source by including other service specific data, previously held in silos.

Maintaining one, central data source

Please talk to us if you have data you would like to share with other services to benefit all of our most vulnerable residents. Where we can, we will append it to our data.

If you need access to the Qlik dashboard with the detailed data we have created - get in touch!

In emergency scenarios, different legal bases for sharing data may be utilised, making it easier for us to share this data - we will respond to all requests for data as a matter of urgency, track where the data is being used and clear all requests with the Council’s Data Protection Officer.

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Hackney staff - please use our data!

Let’s not duplicate effort. Instead let’s share what we know with one another so that we can quickly understand our most vulnerable residents, while also keeping their data secure.