Under-served territories explorer

What this is, and who it is for. The public Community Finance explorer answers “where can a business find a community lender?” This tool answers the opposite, and more strategic, question: where are the small businesses that community lending does not reach? It overlays three layers across all 361 UK local authority districts, the demand (the local stock of small businesses, the firms that actually borrow), the need (deprivation, the reason community lenders exist), and the supply (community-lender coverage), then ranks the places where deprived small businesses have no local lender.

Policy For government and the Community Finance Partnership Taskforce, a UK-wide read of where the network does not reach, sized by the businesses affected, not just the population.

Market For CDFIs and social investors, a market map of the whitespace: the deprived, business-dense territories an existing lender could expand into, or a new entrant could open up.

Read it in three parts: the grid plots need (deprivation) against supply (lenders), with circle size set to population or the small-business stock; the map shades where the gaps are; and the bar chart ranks the priority areas, by population, deprivation, or the small-business market. It opens with all sub-national lenders counted; untick Regional or Nation-wide to expose thinner local provision. Focus a nation, choose what the map shades, and print the current view (landscape) for a clean report.

The negative of the public map: where community lending is not active, and where deprivation says it should be.

1. Grading: deprivation (need) vs lenders (supply); circle size = population

2. The map: darker = deeper gap

3. Priority candidate areas

The bottom-right of the grid: districts more deprived than the UK average (over 20% of people in the most-deprived fifth) with no or one local or regional lender. Nation-wide lenders are not counted here, since they are not local provision, so this list does not change when you toggle Nation-wide. Ranked by the measure chosen above; colour by nation.

Need axis / horizontal: share of the area’s population in the UK’s most-deprived quintile (line = 20% UK average). Supply axis / vertical: number of active-category lenders serving the area. Map, “coverage depth”: every district shaded by how many active lenders serve it (darkest = none). Map, “under-served population”: only districts with no active lender, shaded by the population (or most-deprived-fifth population) left uncovered.
Population: ONS mid-year estimates 2024 (via NOMIS) for Great Britain, and NISRA mid-year estimates 2024 for Northern Ireland. Deprivation: mySociety Composite UK Index of Multiple Deprivation (CC BY 4.0), adapted by SDWH to local authority level; harmonises the English IMD (MHCLG), Scottish SIMD, Welsh WIMD and NI NIMDM, Crown copyright under OGL v3.0. Business counts: ONS UK Business Counts, local units 2024 (via NOMIS), Crown copyright under OGL v3.0; small = 0 to 49 employees. Coverage: SDWH analysis of lender territories. Boundaries: ONS (LAD 2024).