As Hull is much more deprived than the national average, the majority of indicators associated with employment, housing, crime, educational attainment, prevalence of risk factors, health status, mortality rates, etc. will generally be worse in Hull than England. Therefore, it is difficult to assess the degree to which the indicator might be worse than England given Hull’s deprivation, and as a result it is often useful to compare indicators with geographical areas that have similar characteristics as Hull. However, no two geographical areas are extremely similar in terms of population size, age structure of population, deprivation, ethnicity, housing, the economy and labour market, etc. In practice, different people and organisations have grouped different geographical areas together in order to try to assess similarity of different geographical areas, and in doing so have generally used slightly different measures to assess similarity. As a result, there are a number of different ‘sets’ of geographical areas that are quoted as being similar to Hull.
The Office for Health Improvement & Disparities (formerly Public Health England) often use one set of areas that are comparable to Hull which are generally based on demographics, deprivation and health characteristics. Hull City Council use another set of comparator areas which uses similar criteria but take into account information less relevant to health such as local authority financial information. When comparing information at across NHS geographies (Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) or since 1st July 2022 the Integrated Care System), the boundaries do not necessarily match comparator local authorities so another set of comparator areas might exist when comparing Hull with other areas when using data that is only available at CCG level or sub-ICS geographical level (mainly information that is available at general practice / primary care level). Whilst the geographical boundaries are the same for the local authority and sub-ICS in Hull, the populations differ as the local authority population is the resident population (around 260,000 residents) whereas the sub-ICS population is the population registered with Hull GPs (and is larger around 305,000 patients).