Finding Evidence of Need for Your Project

The Community-led Action Planning Toolkit is a website designed to help local communities create their own action plans. It provides various methods to identify your community's priorities, such as questionnaires and focus groups. It also includes guidance on how to analyse and use your findings.

The Place Standard Tool provides a simple framework to structure conversations about place. It allows you to think about the physical elements of a place as well as the social aspects. The tool provides prompts for discussions, allowing you to consider all the elements of a place in a methodical way. The tool pinpoints the assets of a place as well as areas where a place could improve. There is also a Place Standard Tool with a Climate Lens and a Place Standard Tool for Children and Young People.

The Right Way is a project run by the Scottish Youth Parliament (SYP) and funded by the Scottish Government’s Children’s Rights Unit. It aims to support and challenge officials and decision-makers, as duty bearers, to work to ensure young people’s Article 12 right is respected. Nine resources have been developed by young people to help decision-makers practice meaningful participation. These include case studies, FAQs, online training, checklists and more.

The National Standards for Community Engagement gives pointers on the things you should think about to ensure inclusivity when carrying out community engagement.

In 2025, S3 Geography students at five schools across Argyll and Bute used the Place Standard Tool to tell us what they think is good about the places they live and what they would like to see improved. Find out what they had to say and consider whether your project contributes to making Argyll and Bute a great place for young people!

In 2019, Argyll and Bute Council carried out a consultation using the Place Standard Tool to find out how communities felt about their places. You can find the published results here: 'How good is your place'

Scotland’s Census is the official count of every person and household in the country. The answers people give to census questions help build up a picture of the population.
The Argyll and Bute Council website features a section titled Information about Argyll and Bute, which covers a range of facts and figures about the area, as well as an overview of its economy and population.
The Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation is a relative measure of deprivation across 6,976 small areas (called data zones). If an area is identified as ‘deprived’, this can relate to people having a low income but it can also mean fewer resources or opportunities. SIMD looks at the extent to which an area is deprived across seven domains: income, employment, education, health, access to services, crime and housing.

The National Records of Scotland (NRS) publish a wide range of statistical data about the people and population of Scotland, including Scotland's census.

Nomis is a service provided by Office for National Statistics (ONS), the UK’s largest independent producer of official statistics. On their website, they publish statistics related to population, society and the labour market at national, regional and local levels. This includes data from current and previous censuses.
Understanding Scottish Places helps you better understand and compare the places where you work and live. It draws on a variety of useful data, including population data, employment data, public services data, commuter flow maps, commercial data, social data, and connectivity and environmental assets data.

The ScotPHO profiles feature over 250 public health indicators, covering areas such as health and wellbeing, care and wellbeing, adult mental health, tobacco, alcohol, drugs, children and young people, and population.
The Met Office Climate Data Portal provides temperature, precipitation, and sea level data for the Argyll and Bute Local Authority Area, including both past observations and future projections.
The Social Enterprise in Scotland Census is a regular and comprehensive account of social enterprise activity in Scotland. Every two years the project reports on the scale, reach and contribution of social enterprise activity across the country as well as the characteristics, prospects and needs of the organisations behind it.