Local charities › what the records show · drawn as a map of connections

Local infrastructure: what the records show from outside

A body sees its own members and the people who reach them. Public records see every charity in England at once. This page sets the two side by side for local infrastructure: who else does this work, where the network is thin, how exposed the field is, and how the people it serves are written about.

1. Who else does this work

This field has no single group of people to count other charities by, so this section is not made for it.

2. Where the network is thin

31 of the 152 county and unitary areas of England are in the thinnest fifth of NAVCA’s presence per person in need. The median share of residents on low incomes in those areas is 20.2%, against 24.6% across England.

Area	Share of residents on low incomes	Thin in how many of 24 fields on this site
Birmingham	42.0%	8
Brent	36.9%	11
Bradford	36.2%	7
Haringey	35.2%	13
Coventry	29.9%	7
Doncaster	29.6%	10
Gateshead	28.5%	11
Greenwich	28.0%	7
County Durham	26.8%	5
Hillingdon	26.1%	15
Wigan	24.3%	9
Hammersmith and Fulham	24.2%	11
Lincolnshire	21.5%	6
North Northamptonshire	20.6%	5
Norfolk	20.4%	6

The 15 with the most residents on low incomes are shown, of 31.

Across every field on this site, the areas thin in most of them: Isles of Scilly (17 of 21), Barking and Dagenham (16 of 24), Portsmouth (16 of 24), Hartlepool (16 of 25), Rutland (16 of 25), Thurrock (16 of 25), City of London (15 of 24), Havering (15 of 24), Hillingdon (15 of 24), Lambeth (14 of 24).

What this can and cannot say. A thin area is one where the body’s own listed places and its charities’ recorded areas of operation are few for the people counted there. It does not mean nobody there gets help: section 1 is the measure of who else is at work.

3. Money and exposure

Fragile means under three months’ reserves on the latest return, or spending above income for three years running. Government-dependent means half or more of income from government grants and contracts.

Group	Charities	Fragile	Reserves (months, median)	Income change over returns (median)	Donations share (median)
The field	253	41.9%	3.1	23.1%	1.2%
All other charities in England	67,855	20.8%	4.4	39.6%	29.1%
The field, government-dependent	113	45.1%	3	29.1%	1.1%
The field, not dependent	140	39.3%	3.7	20.5%	1.2%
The field, in the most deprived third of neighbourhoods	110	47.3%	2.8	24.7%	1.3%
The field, in the least deprived third	31	29.0%	4.6	7.2%	0.4%

44.3% of the field is government-dependent.

4. How the people are written about

Not made for this field.

5. NAVCA’s members against the rest of the field

165 charities in the field are on NAVCA’s own list or record its membership; 91 are not.

Measure	Members	Rest of the field
Fragile (share)	48.5%	29.5%
Government-dependent (share)	52.7%	28.9%
Reserves, months (median)	3.0	4.0
Income change over returns, % (median)	28.5	15.9
Donations share, % (median)	0.9	3.6
Income, £ (median)	907,638	277,244
No income source over 60% (share)	3.6%	10.8%

A figure is shown only for a group of five or more; a median is of the charities with the figure on their return.

What this can and cannot say. These are counts over groups of charities and places in England, from their own returns and reports and from national statistics. They show where a field stands beside the rest of the sector; they do not rank any charity, name any, or say why.