Driving local growth through data — the Yorkshire Engagement Portal (YEP) is now live

Uncategorized Wednesday 2 July 2025

An introduction to the Yorkshire Engagement Portal

Prof. Vania Sena, Guifré Ballesté Santacana, and Stanislava Naneva from The University of Sheffield, who are working on the Yorkshire Policy Innovation Partnership (YPIP) ‘collecting and utilising community data’ work package, hosted a soft launch for the first release of the Yorkshire Engagement Portal (YEP) — a free informatics hub that consolidates reliable data at regional and local levels.

The team have established the Yorkshire & Humber Office for Data Analytics (YHODA), to support data-driven decision-making through open-access data and analytics. The YHODA Team works with communities, businesses, and policymakers to promote data-based insights and solutions that drive inclusive and sustainable economic growth in the Yorkshire and the Humber region. YHODA’s overall aim is to enhance regional data accessibility and provide data insights to policymakers and communities alike via its Yorkshire Engagement Portal (YEP).

The origins and co-design

The Yorkshire Vitality Index — an indicator of the region’s economic, environmental, and social status — was the starting point for YEP and was intended to address the gap in understanding the region and what factors contribute to its vitality. The YHODA Team, with the support of a dedicated Management and Advisory Board, set out to create a scalable model that connects local insights to regional and national policy initiatives.

Throughout the design process of YEP, the team have gathered insights from different stakeholders across Yorkshire and the Humber to better understand regional data challenges. This engagement highlighted a consistent lack of legitimacy ore recognition for community-generated data which limits the types of evidence used to inform policies and reduces community voice in policymaking. Some regional and local data can also be outdated, incomplete, or hard to access which may impede decision-making processes at both local and regional levels. Existing barriers to accessing and sharing data means that there is often poor coordination across regional initiatives which leads to wasted resources, duplicated efforts, and sometimes, even public distrust. YHODA present its Yorkshire Engagement Portal (YEP) as a first step toward alleviating some of the data-related challenges faced by its stakeholders.

Launching the first release of YEP

On Tuesday 17 June 2025, a diverse group of over 60 stakeholders from across the region joined the launch event in-person at the University of Sheffield and online to learn about YEP’s origins, development, and progress. Event attendees included representatives from local and combined authorities, community organisations, the NHS, The Office for National Statistics (ONS), Yorkshire Universities, and private companies from across Yorkshire and the Humber. The YHODA Team delivered a demonstration of the portal and invited attendees to share insights and suggestions on next steps for development.

At present, five different interactive data dashboards have been developed under the ‘Yorkshire Vitality Suite’ and are currently available on YEP:

• Observatory — compare 50 key local indicators over time.
• Jobs — track the number of employees by industry, year, and neighbourhood.
• Industry — track the number of businesses by industry and geography over time.
• Neighbourhoods — access detailed insights at small geographical levels for nine indicators.
• Forecasting — predict how key indicators of social, economic, and environmental vitality are likely to change over time.

Kersten England, YPIP Co-Director, delivered the keynote speech at the event and shared previous experiences of where good data collection and use has provided large scale benefit. Kersten highlighted the potential of YEP: — “Going beyond admiring the problem and using data collection to take action…data not only being used to fix problems but also to identify opportunities. It will be a phenomenal resource, democratising and widening access to comprehensive data about our region and all its neighbourhoods. It’s uses are endless.”

Potential opportunities and collaboration going forward

There was keen interest from the NHS and local authority representatives on using and testing the platform and exploring possible collaborative work to enhance YEP’s offer on health data. The Office for National Statistics have offered an opportunity to share the platform more broadly, and the team will explore whether the information can be harmonised for combined authorities across the datasets.

Professor Gary Dymski, YPIP principal investigator, commented on the progress made as well as the next steps to be taken: “The remarkable team of Vania, Guifré, Stan have done amazing work — in record time, they have given Yorkshire’s policy-stakeholders a tool that provides the accessible information needed to make shared progress on the region’s challenges. The next steps will be equally exciting; these steps are likely to include creating guides for novice users, including more data on environmental sustainability, and developing ways for community members and groups to create and share their own data. Our ambition is for YHODA and YEP to be valued, permanent features of our region’s policy landscape.”

Exploring YEP from different stakeholder perspectives

The Yorkshire Engagement Portal (YEP) provides an opportunity to demystify and democratise data in a clear and accessibly way. The free data analytics platform is now live at yorkshireportal.org with several developments across the functionalities in the pipeline. The team will be reflecting on feedback and suggestions from the event and will continue to explore the best way to engage with stakeholders and future users of YEP. They want to continue a collaborative design of this data resource and welcome your views and input, so please get in touch with ideas or for a chat — yhoda@sheffield.ac.uk