The quality of life in English local authority areas

Since the enactment of New Labour's sustainable development agenda in 1999, English local authorities have been placed at the helm of a variety of devolved localism initiatives designed to foster sustainable communities that contribute to a high quality of life for existing and future generations. This paper considers the scale of the challenge that confronts local authorities in terms of attaining these outcomes, by drawing attention to their current quality of life situation. The baseline conditions in question are measured by reference to the Audit Commission's local quality of life indicators dataset, which it compiled in 2005 from a range of existing local government performance indicators. The dataset is subjected to k-means clustering and principal components analysis to assess how far English local authorities measure up to Labour's sustainable communities ideal and to highlight the type and degree of quality of life disparity that exists between them. The results from the analysis are used to evaluate the feasibility of Labour's devolved localism approach to sustainable community formation and to provide important insights to local policy makers responsible for fostering sustainable communities. The implications of the findings for future research are also considered. © 2011 Taylor & Francis.