ABSTRACT
As briefly introduced in Chapter 1, the use of indicators in Britain has been closely related to the twists and turns in urban and regional policies, and resource allocation frameworks adopted by successive governments over the last twenty years. The changing political ideology and government ethos over public expenditure and policy monitoring have shaped both the methodology and the usage of indicators. The dramatic shifts are most notable in the pragmatic approach that has evolved around the usage of deprivation indices at both the national and local level. The discussion in this chapter aims to deal with the first three trends identified in Chapter 1 by providing a historical account of how the policy and political agenda moulds and shapes the attitude and ethos of indicator usage. It then explores the response of local policy-makers, in terms of attitude and capacity, towards the pressing requirements of using indicators via a number of recent empirical studies.
