Our information about priority places in Devon is currently a work in progress and more details to support the information below will be available in the coming weeks (early September 2026)

Introduction

This guidance is for colleagues and partners across local government (Devon and Torbay Combined County Authority, Devon County Council, district councils and town or parish councils), the NHS (including the ICB), VCSE organisations, community groups and other stakeholders who contribute to improving health and reducing inequalities in Devon.

It aims to give a clear direction of where organisations can prioritise their work: By choosing to prioritise the same key places and by working together better support can be provided.

Key summary points

• Having consistent priority places help us focus place-based work where inequalities are greatest by using an agreed evidence base.
• Priority places are neighbourhood-sized areas (LSOAs) in Devon that are in the top 30% most deprived nationally (IMD 2025 deciles 1–3). In the Devon County Council footprint, 61 LSOAs are identified in total.
• To support practical working, these LSOAs are grouped into 14 priority places (four rural, six coastal towns, four urban inland).
• Priority place names are a practical shorthand — they do not mean the whole town, parish or rural area is a ‘priority’; the priority is the specific LSOAs.
• We invite teams and organisations working across Devon to take a place-based approach to working with priority places to address health inequalities.

Key definitions

• LSOA (Lower-layer Super Output Area): A small area used for statistics (often around 1,500 residents).
• IMD (Index of Multiple Deprivation): A national measure that ranks areas by deprivation using multiple factors.
• Deciles 1–3: The 30% most deprived areas nationally (1 = most deprived).
• Priority place: A working geography made up of one or more priority LSOAs to make collaboration practical.

Why priority places, and why now?

There is a clear direction nationally and locally to move to neighbourhood level working in order to better serve our communities.

In Devon, we have a 15-year difference in life expectancy which is affected by where we live. We need to consider all the building blocks of health to address this inequity: having a safe house, good employment, access to education and skills, supportive communities, access to green space and wider services through reliable transport links.

No team or organisation can address these building blocks alone, but if we collaborate at place level by working with the reality of communities we can work in a different way to address inequity in our most disadvantaged communities.

In Devon, this aligns with local government reorganisation (LGR) and the development of neighbourhood working approaches, and the evolving roles of the Devon and Torbay Combined County Authority (DTCCA) and the NHS Integrated Care Board (ICB) in focusing decisions on community need and tackling inequalities.

We recognise that there are previous, current, and future plans for supporting people across Devon and many different ways to prioritise workloads.

Good outcomes are dependent on coordinated and collaborative ways of working and we hope that by prioritising specific places we can help promote approaches that are about responding to the realities of different places.

We want to set a clear direction to move past the ‘where’ conversation and move towards the ‘how’ we support communities. An excellent recent local example can be seen with Poverty Truth Ilfracombe which has seen the community come together with senior leaders from organisations to understand the underlying local issues creating poverty and explore creative ways to address these.

The purpose of the priority places approach

By defining and using priority places, we aim to support teams and organisations working across Devon to:

• ensure that addressing systemic inequalities is central to our work
• use a consistent geography when planning targeted work and joining up resources
• spend less time debating where to focus, and more time working with communities to understand what will make the biggest difference
• combine data with lived experience and local insight to shape action
• strengthen collaboration and help scale up or attract funding where appropriate

What are ‘priority places’?

Priority places are defined using the Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) 2025. They are the LSOAs in Devon that are in the top 30% most deprived areas nationally (IMD deciles 1–3). This is an extension of the NHS CORE20 national approach which uses IMD data to identify the most deprived 20% of the population.

When we use the NHS CORE20 approach in Devon this does not include any rural LSOAs, but we know that inequality exists and is more hidden in data averages in rural areas.

By extending the NHS CORE20 approach to the most deprived 30% of the population we include rural areas and gain the ability to think about deprivation across our urban, coastal, and rural areas.

IMD is recognised as a valid tool for identifying deprivation in urban, coastal and rural areas. However, in rural areas deprivation can be hidden within data averages

When we look at IMD across the Devon County Council footprint we have no rural LSOAs in the 0-20% (deciles 1 and 2) but we know that deprivation in rural areas exists.

The most recent 2025 IMD data release indicated that in Devon our urban areas are typically less deprived than other urban areas, but our rural areas are more deprived that other rural areas nationally.

By focussing on the top 30% most deprived LSOAS we can ensure we are taking a proportionate approach to addressing inequalities across our urban, coastal and rural communities.

Across Devon, there are 61 priority LSOAs. These areas are predominantly urban inland (26) and urban coastal (25), with a smaller number of rural inland (eight) and rural coastal (two) LSOAs, as defined using the 2021 Census Urban Rural Classification.

There are three LSOAs in decile 1 (the top 10% of deprived areas nationally) which are all in coastal areas in North Devon (two in Barnstaple and one in Ilfracombe).

Priority places are named after the geography where the LSOAs sit, but the ‘priority’ is the specific LSOAs rather than the whole town or parish.

For example, the ‘Exmouth priority place’ specifically refers to the two LSOAs identified. This is important to understand across each individual priority place to ensure that people living within these LSOAs are integral to any development, learning, and reviews of services changes, projects, or funding opportunities to ensure the needs of people within these areas are met.

This does not mean that people living in the communities outside the priority LSOAs are excluded.

Which places are included?

For place-based working, the 61 priority LSOAs are grouped into 14 geographical priority places:

Rural

• Moor to Sea (Dartmouth, Buckfastleigh, South Brent) – three priority LSOAs
• Rural Torridge (Great Torrington, Halwill, Holsworthy and surrounding areas) – five priority LSOAs
• Rural Central (Lapford, Chawleigh, Eastington, Filleigh and surrounding areas) – one priority LSOA
• Hartland – one priority LSOA

Coastal towns

• Barnstaple – 10 priority LSOAs
• Ilfracombe – four priority LSOAs
• Bideford (incl. Northam Central) – five priority LSOAs
• Exmouth – two priority LSOAs
• Teignmouth – two priority LSOAs
• Dawlish – two priority LSOAs

Urban inland areas

• Exeter – 12 priority LSOAs
• Newton Abbot – six priority LSOAs
• Tiverton – seven priority LSOAs
• Honiton – one priority LSOA

How our Public Health team will support place-based working

Our goal is to ensure that health inequalities are at the forefront of moving to place-based working with communities.

By prioritising places, we can better understand what issues are faced in our most deprived communities and when resources are available we will strive to take test-learn-adapt approaches to build community-led system change.

Across all the priority places our team will:

• create priority-place profiles to share base-line information about these places
• advocate for action on those building blocks of health (for example, housing, transport, community connection, skills, and employment) that communities’ prioritise as being of most significance in their place
• use priority places as the default focus for targeted work, while recognising the duty to deliver universal services
• identify champions within the Public Health team to further support some priority places

What we are asking stakeholders to do

• Support a priority-place approach by consistently considering them when planning work and discussing where to focus resources.
• Share insight across organisations to develop and build on knowledge about these areas.
• Look for opportunities for collaboration to join programmes, engagement and funding to reduce duplication and increase impact.
• Support longer term approaches that are community-led and take test-learn-grow approaches, not investing in short-term pilots.

Appendices

There are a total of 61 LSOAs in Devon in the top 30% most deprived (deciles 1-3). These are predominantly urban inland (26) and urban coastal (25) areas with a smaller number of inland rural (eight) and coastal rural (two) LSOAs.

There are three decile one LSOA areas, all of which are coastal areas in North Devon (two Barnstaple, one Ilfracombe).

Map of the priority places

View a map of the priority places in Devon

List of all Devon IMD deciles 1-3

View a list of all Devon IMD deciles 1-3

Rural priority places

Moor to Sea (Dartmouth, Buckfastleigh, South Brent)