Real Lives, Real Issues - State of the Region Report 2004

Real Lives, Real Issues, the first State of the Region Report for the West Midlands, gathers together many of the issues addressed by regional strategies into a single report.

It is designed to be accessible to both specialist policy officers and a wide audience across the whole of the West Midlands.

One of our fundamental objectives is to promote joined up thinking and decision making across the West Midlands. Key elements of this include:

• Improving the robustness and completeness of the regional evidence base.
• Identifying where the intelligence gaps lie.
• Placing the available information in context to offer a clear view of the challenges and successes of the region.

The aim of this report is to examine the key challenges facing the West Midlands and offer an issue-​led account of both the current situation and the historical progress that has been made.

The report recognises that no single issue exists in isolation and a fundamental part of its objectives is to consider the inter-​relationships between them, identifying the underlying processes that need to be addressed.

The report comprises three separate sections. The first part opens by presenting the issues for the region from the perspective of a number of individuals living within the region. Diversity is one of the West Midlands great strengths, and different issues not only have different levels of importance for different people, but often entirely different effects.

Whilst these seven voices cannot capture the full chorus of the West Midlands, by using these personal perspectives we hope that the report will help to widen appreciation of regional issues and stimulate discussion and reflection on the impact of particular strategies on individuals. The report then uses this as a springboard for a discussion of the interconnections between issues.

The second section of the report focuses on the quantitative evidence surrounding the key successes and challenges in the region and considers four broad themes:

• Economy
• Social change
• Quality of life
• Environment and natural resources

The report compares the West Midlands to the other English regions, and the sub-​regions of the West Midlands. Gaps in the regional evidence base are identified.

Part two also sets out how the central challenges that have been identified are approached by the key regional strategies.

The final section is a data annex of tables and graphs to supplement the arguments and evidence presented in the report.

In addition to the published report, we prepared datasets (updated in 2008) covering not only the figures evidenced in the report but a wider selection of intelligence that helped inform its writing.

There are four subsequent State of the Region Reports for 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008.

In 2008, we began a new process of State of the Region Dialogues to make the evidence we produce even more relevant to the needs of policy makers. The new process also aims to strengthen the way in which that evidence is used to inform policy.

Report

2004 State of the Region full report (PDF, 4.35 MB)

2004 State of the Region executive summary (PDF, 853 KB)

Report sections

Foreword (PDF, 300KB)

Introduction (PDF, 212KB)

Part 1: Real Lives, Real Issues (PDF, 1.2MB)

Part 2: The State of the Region (PDF, 861KB)

Part 3: Regional Polices and Plans (PDF, 304KB)

Data annexes (PDF, 937KB)

Datasets

Please note that the datasets below are from 2004 and have since been updated in our 2008 Report.