Decision details

To agree a memorandum of understanding between the Council and Gloucestershire County Council that sets out the agreement by which partner authorities, purchase “MAIDeN services” until March 31st 2026. The charge to Cheltenham Borough Council’s will be £11k in 2025/26.

The Data, Analysis and Insights Team at Gloucestershire County Council provides research and information services to a range of Gloucestershire partner authorities. These services are known as MAIDeN services, the acronym standing for Multi-Agency Information Database for Neighbourhoods.

The MAIDeN services enable Gloucestershire districts and partners (including voluntary organisations and parish and town councils) to access products and services provided by the Data and Analysis Team - Gloucestershire County Council via https://www.gloucestershire.gov.uk/inform/

The MAIDeN services also include access to a dedicated resource to help with bespoke data, information and intelligence requests.

The full list of services that are available are as follows:

Community safety reports
Monthly interactive reports showing numbers and rates (using maps, graphs and tables) for a range of crimes including; criminal damage, ASB, domestic burglary, racist incidents, class A drug offences, young victims of crime. This gives access to some data that is not publicly available at this level of geography.

Accessibility toolkit
This toolkit is updated bi-annually and provides our calculations of the drive and public transport journey times to key predefined services in the county.

Unemployment bulletin
A monthly bulletin providing an analysis of the latest unemployment data at county, district and ward level.

Population analysis of the protected characteristics
This interactive report provides an overview of the population of Gloucestershire by the nine protected characteristics, where possible information goes down to ward level.

Overview reports
A series of reports summarising the key issues for a particular topic. Current topics include Economy, Population, Community Safety, Accessibility, Adults and Older People, Children and Young People, Deprivation and Environment.

Additional products
Additional products published on Inform Gloucestershire, using newly released data e.g. Census reports

Cost of living dashboard
The cost of living dashboard aims to help build an understanding of the current financial pressures on Gloucestershire’s residents. It brings together a range of indicators about employment and income, household costs, including energy and food prices, and assistance schemes.

Housing and Employment Land Database
Hosting and managing the Housing and Employment Land Database.

Parish Profiles
We have commissioned the production of a profile for each parish in the county. The profiles cover topics including Population, Vulnerable Groups, Housing, Education and Skills, Economy, Access and Transport, Crime and Safety, Communities and Environment and Health and Wellbeing

Use of OCSI
Use of the OCSI tool Local Insight. Local Insight can support you with strategic planning and service delivery by providing up-to-date information and analysis of your local communities. Based on up-to-date open data, Local Insight enables you to map over 100 social and economic indicators against your communities.

Access to customer segmentation data
Customer segmentation data groups the UK population by shared characteristics. By analysing demographic data, social factors, population and consumer behaviour, it provides precise information and an understanding of different types of people.

Newsletter
A regular newsletter detailing new products available.

Named Contact
A named person to contact when the partner has questions or needs information.

Ad Hoc Enquires (less than 4 hours per enquiry)
Ability to contact the team with a reasonable number of small enquiries (less than 4 hours) on an ad hoc basis.

Ad Hoc Enquires (that take between 4 hours and 4 days)
Ability to contact the team with small enquiries (that take up to 1-4 days) on an ad hoc basis.

Bespoke accessibility enquiries to support SHLA
In order to support the SHLA we regularly carry out bespoke enquires for most districts that involve calculating travel time from potential development sites to local facilities.


Recent support from the GCC Research team include undertaking a children and young people's needs assessment for the No Child Left Behind programme, delivering a presentation to elected members about the results from the 2021 census, providing up-to-date equalities data and providing data to our economic advisory board.

In addition, the council has access to the Local Insight which enables the council to collate and map data across 100 social and economic indicators for a range of geographies including wards.

The council could choose not to enter into the memorandum of understanding between the Council and Gloucestershire County Council. This would save £11k but would reduce the council's access to data.

Given the financial pressures that the council is under, it is suggested that a review of the council's usage of the MAIDeN services is undertaken to evaluate as to whether the charge of £11k represents good value for money - and that this review informs budget setting for 2026-27.

None.