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Summary of the local place

Torridge, in the north west of Devon, is a coastal and rural district with the second-lowest population density of any local authority area in the South West, after West Devon. According to Census 2021 data, Torridge鈥檚 population size has increased by 6.7%, from 63,800 in 2011 to around 68,100 in 2021. Historically, funding in the South West for business and community development has focussed on larger population centres to the south of Torridge, such as Plymouth, Exeter and Torbay.

Torridge have strategically aligned the use of its 拢1 million United Kingdom Shared Prosperity Fund (UKSPF) funding with the wider economic approach for the area, complementing other sources of funding such as its 拢15.6 million Levelling Up Fund (LUF) allocation and its 拢995,350 Rural England Prosperity Fund (REPF) allocation.

Unit of analysis

While the process evaluation will cover all funded activities , the impact evaluation will focus on three flagship project themes, which fall within Supporting Local Businesses and Communities and Place investment priorities: business support grants delivered as a joint project with North Devon Council (NDC); the North Devon Biosphere project, and a series of place-level interventions in the town of Bideford which include supporting local markets, urban beautification, cultural events and interventions to tackle anti-social behaviour. The evaluation will include surveys, in-depth interviews and data analysis and a quasi-experimental design (QED) approach for the place level interventions in Bideford.

Methodological approach

Process evaluation

The process evaluation will analyse core thematic areas including fund design, fund implementation, delivery of interventions and data collection and monitoring. The Torridge case study will focus on analysing the effectiveness of strategic design of the UKSPF interventions in conjunction with other funding streams, in particular the Appledore Clean Maritime Innovation Centre (ACMIC), which has received a 拢15.6 million allocation from the Levelling-Up Fund.

Process evaluation tasks will involve a review of data, documents and changes to policy and socio-economic context, consultations with delivery and strategic stakeholders and surveys with project delivery bodies.

Impact evaluation

QED approaches have been considered for each of the four elements of the evaluation, with the following conclusions.

• Business support grants - it is assessed that QED would not be viable due to the small and non-uniform nature of the support provided.
• North Devon Biosphere - it is assessed that QED would not be viable due to the small number of beneficiaries (circa 10-15 businesses).
• Place level community support interventions in Bideford 鈥� it is assessed the QED would be viable in part. This would seek to use nearby towns (such as Appledore, Westward Ho!, Northam, Barnstaple, Great Torrington) as counterfactual towns for a difference-in-difference analysis tracking metrics such as crime data (collected from Reported Crime Data for England and Wales). Other metrics will also be considered, including community pride (through 鈥榊our Community, Your Say鈥� survey), house prices and footfall data.

Across all three interventions, a Contribution Analysis impact evaluation method is proposed (with the QED providing complementary evidence for the case of the place level interventions in Bideford). This will allow for assessment of the changes in key outcome indicators relating to each intervention type, and an analysis of the contribution made to those changes by UKSPF funded activities.

Economic evaluation

It is proposed that the economic evaluation will follow the 4E鈥檚 approach set out by the National Audit office, considering economy, efficiency, effectiveness and equity of the programme investments.

Data to support the evaluation

The following data sources will be used across the three main strands of the impact evaluation:

Primary data collection

Business support grants	North Devon Biosphere	Place level interventions in Bideford
鈻� Stakeholder consultation (strategic and delivery) 鈻� Surveys of supported businesses (stratified sampling approach to cover different support types) 鈻� Case studies of supported businesses	鈻� Stakeholder consultation (strategic and delivery) 鈻� In-depth beneficiary consultations	鈻� Stakeholder consultation (strategic and delivery) 鈻� Research with users of town centre spaces, including residents, businesses and visitors 鈻� 鈥榊our Community, Your Say鈥� survey on perceptions of place

Secondary data collection

Business support grants	Place level interventions in Bideford
鈻� ONS data on business counts, employment, business births, deaths and survival rates.	鈻� Footfall counts collected by local authorities 鈻� Visitor numbers for key town centre attractions 鈻� Crime data from the Reported Crime Data for England and Wales