All posts by bhamdatablog

Get the data: ‘atypical’ staffing in Midlands universities

October 2, 2013data, Education, UniversitiesHESA, UCU, University and Colleges Unionbhamdatablog

The University and Colleges Union (UCU) recently revealed that more than half of higher education institutions in the UK use controversial zero hour contracts.

The story was based on comparing FOI responses on zero hour staffing with official overall staffing figures from the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA). However, some figures showed some institutions as having more zero hour staff than staff overall, so we called up HESA to find out why those numbers weren’t adding up.

The answer may lie in how staffing is counted by HESA. The ‘definitions‘ link on that staffing data above specifies that:

“Atypical staff are those members of staff whose contracts involve working arrangements that are not permanent, involve complex employment relationships and/or involve work away from the supervision of the normal work provider. For atypical staff only a minimum data set is required.”

In some cases zero hour staff may come under this category. On the same topic: Continue reading →

Birmingham missing affordable housing target – get the data

October 1, 2013data, Housingaffordable housing, Birmingham, Bradford, Bristol, Bureau of Investigative Journalism, Cardiff, Dudley, Herefordshire, Lichfield, Manchester, Rugby, Sandwell, Section 106 agreements, Sheffield, Stafford, Telford and Wrekin, Walsall, Wolverhampton, Wyre Forestbhamdatablog

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism has found that ”none of Birmingham’s biggest housing developments meet its 35% affordable housing target”.

“Of 82 of the biggest housing developments in 10 major cities [just] 40% complied with local affordable housing targets. Other than Birmingham, the cities where at least 50% of housing schemes failed to meet local affordable housing targets were Bristol, Bradford, Cardiff, Manchester and Sheffield.

We’ve extracted the parts of the BIJ data (published here) that deals with large developments in Birmingham and the renegotiation of agreements in the West Midlands – and published it in two tables below.

You can also find the Birmingham data in a Google spreadsheet here, and the West Midlands data here.

A background to how the BIJ investigated housing can be found here.

What else can you find out about the developments, or about housing in the Midlands? Let us know if we can help. Continue reading →

Previously on @bhamdatablog… notes on fire service and probation data

September 17, 2013eventsprobation service, West Midlands Fire Servicebhamdatablog

If you’re interested in what sort of data West Midlands Fire Service deals with, or how to understand probation data, these two posts from previous Datablog meetups may be of interest…

Introducing the Birmingham datablog

September 17, 2013UncategorizedBehind The Numbers, Birmingham Mail, Buzzdatabhamdatablog

The Birmingham Datablog project launched in January 2013 with the Birmingham Mail’s Behind The Numbers section, a Twitter account @bhamdatablog, and a series of regular meetups under the Hacks/Hackers banner.

However, since Buzzdata closed, we’ve had nowhere to host our data, so I’ve decided to launch a separate blog just to provide links to local data, writeups of meetups (up till now published on the general Help Me Investigate blog), and other ‘inside baseball‘ stuff that doesn’t fit elsewhere.

Let me know what you’d like to see from the site, and the project as a whole.