Pilot schemes offering health checks for people retiring from work will begin next week as part of the National Service Framework for Older People. 

Performance measurement in the public sector has grown over the years in a haphazard and unco-ordinated way. The Social Exclusion Unit’s report ‘Better Information’ exposed the chaos of the current systems revealing that though much data exists on social deprivation little can be used to analyse the problem by neighbourhood, because it was not collected in a consistent form, was not collected at all, or was not being shared between organizations.