Decision

The Director of Public Health has decided to approve the direct award of a contract via the Government Commercial Agency G Cloud 14 Framework – RM1557.14 Lot 2 to CACI Limited for the provision of Acorn Geodemographics consumer segmentation tool, for a term of 3 years commencing on 26th January 2027 with the option to extend for one further period of up to 12 months with a total contract value of £104,855 for the 4 years.

Reasons for the decision

The Council has a growing need for richer population insight that complements existing demographic and outcomes intelligence by providing greater understanding of the behaviours, characteristics and circumstances that influence service demand and outcomes.

This procurement supports delivery of the Wirral Health and Wellbeing Strategy by strengthening the evidence base for understanding population need, reducing health inequalities, supporting prevention activity and enabling more targeted and effective service planning and commissioning.

Existing intelligence products such as Local Insight and Fingertips provide valuable information on population characteristics and outcomes. The proposed tool would complement these resources by adding additional lifestyle, behavioural and engagement insight.

The addition of this consumer segmentation tool, CACI’s Acorn Datasets (Acorn, Household Acorn and Wellbeing Acorn), would provide access to demographic, lifestyle, behavioural and health characteristics data that could enable Wirral to understand population needs, service engagement and communication preferences in much greater depth - supporting more precise targeting of prevention and early intervention work and ensuring that resources are directed to where they have the greatest impact.

A review of available market solutions identified ACORN as the option best aligned to the Council's requirements for detailed geodemographic, behavioural and health-related insight. The solution offers postcode-level intel platforms and integration with existing analytical tools and reporting platforms and represents best value through procurement.

Access and use of these consumer segmentation tools improve our understanding and awareness of our local population, specifically their lifestyle, behavioural and health characteristics. A segmentation solution could provide the following -:
•analyses data from hundreds of different sources, and facilitates the segmenting of UK postcodes by common characteristics, to enable us to understand more fully the various types of people who make up our population base and catchment areas;
•combines geography with detailed, up-to-date postcode and household level demographics and information about the characteristics and behaviours of the local population;
•utilises AI techniques, extensive input data, detailed population behaviour information – including unique health data - and dashboards, which enable users to use the tool potentially across the organisation with easy-to-use applications, improving how we approach our service delivery to our local population supporting evidence-based decision making and complementing existing analytical and business intelligence activities;
•provides detailed consumer information that could be used as an evidence base to create more effective business strategies and delivery options;
•functionality to code and profile postcode and household level data in an easy-to-use cloud-based application, providing the Council with detailed insights about residents and community groups who make use of authority services plus identifying residents who may need to make use of Council services should their circumstances change in the future;
•ability to easily share outputs and insight via traditional Microsoft products and services such as excel and PowerBI;
•enables us to personalise our delivery content more readily in order to resonate with different local audiences, so ensuring we can locate our provision in the most appropriate locations as well as prioritise and deliver services to community groups who need it the most;
•that provides insight down to small area level – postcode and household with aggregations to traditional administrative geographies;
•that provides options for local insight data to complement other Council, Partner and Open data to broaden our knowledge base of Wirral residents and communities;
•that enables us to produce specific reports e.g. Joint Strategic Needs Assessments (JSNAs), Public Health Annual Reports (PHARs) and Health Inequalities, etc, whilst enhancing other tools we use, on a range of important population-based topics that provide the insight to support colleagues in their daily decision making;
•can help us to present geodemographic and behaviour insight, at a local level – postcode and household level data aggregated to traditional administrative geographies, on our maps-based platforms that helps to ‘visualise’ the information and makes it more available to the range of audiences.

The datasets supplied through the ACORN solution are derived from aggregated and modelled data sources and do not provide access to personal identifiable information. Use of the system will comply with the UK GDPR, Data Protection Act 2018, the Council's Information Governance requirements and any relevant data-sharing and security policies.

Please note -This procurement process will utilise Government Commercial Agency G Cloud 14 Framework – RM1557.14 Lot 2.

The expected benefits from implementation of the tool include:
•Improved targeting of prevention and early intervention programmes.
•Enhanced understanding of communities experiencing health inequalities.
•Better targeting and personalisation of communications and engagement activities.
•Strengthened evidence for Joint Strategic Needs Assessments, Public Health Annual Reports and other strategic intelligence products.
•More efficient use of resources through improved identification of populations most likely to benefit from services and interventions

These outcomes will support evidence-based decision making across Public Health and wider Council services.

Alternative options considered

Option 1: Do Nothing
Whilst the procurement is led through Public Health, the insight generated has potential application across a range of Council services including prevention, engagement, customer experience, service planning and strategic needs assessment.

Option 2: Procure ACORN Geodemographics Tool (Preferred Option)
This option provides access to detailed geodemographic, behavioural and health-related intelligence, supporting improved targeting of services, prevention programmes, engagement activity and strategic intelligence products. It is considered the option most likely to deliver enhanced insight and value for money across Public Health and wider Council functions.