Wiltshire and Swindon Needs Analysis

We strive to use our insight, community knowledge and connections to target our support where it’s needed most, a key element of our work is to help raise awareness and increase understanding of the local needs and the issues that affect our local communities.

Insight from our strategic partnerships and engagement, our grant-making, and the networks we facilitate, informs our conversations with donors and ensures our grants programmes are responsive and targeted, enabling our local voluntary and community groups to tackle the most pressing issues.

Our Needs Analysis for Wiltshire and Swindon is a core part of our evidence gathering, using a range of socio-economic data to explore local need and priorities, our new research report highlights the challenges facing many of our communities. We re-commissioned Oxford Consultants for Social Inclusion (OCSI) to undertake an update for 2023 that integrates the latest data from the 2021 Census and considers the ongoing impacts of the pandemic and the cost of living crisis. Our communities have seen many changes in the years since the 2011 Census and it’s important for us that this key element of our evidence-base remains timely.

We are again publishing our Needs Analysis as a resource for all those interested in maximising the impact of local charitable activity – local funders, donors, local charities, community groups and partners. Our report shines a light on the inequalities that affect people’s opportunities and life choices, we hope it also helps to spark conversations and inspire action.

The Needs Analysis report is themed including sections on our local population; poverty and deprivation; health wellbeing and disability; education, skill and training; cost of living, economy and employment; community, environment and access and inequality. Each section includes an accessible executive summary with key facts and figures. We have aligned each section to the relevant United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to demonstrate the links between these global goals and their relevance to the challenges we face locally in Wiltshire and Swindon.

We are proud to share our Needs Analysis for Wiltshire and Swindon 2023, and hope you find it informative and helpful, though it’s important to recognise, the report, and the statistics it draws upon, are just part of a wider picture. It is only by also using local knowledge, insight from local communities and national research that we can complete the full picture of needs and priorities in our area.

You can read our latest Needs Analysis here