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Local government is awash with data, yet evidence-informed decision-making often remains a challenge.Officers, elected members, organisations and communities frequently hold different views about what counts as ‘evidence'. Too often, local authorities prioritise organisational data, while professional judgement and lived experience are treated as secondary. The result can be narrow approaches that overlook valuable insight already held within councils and communities.In Rhondda Cynon Taf CBC this challenge has been addressed through a simple but powerful idea – the Evidence Pie.Drawing on established work on evidence-informed decision-making, Rhondda Cynon Taf Health Determinants Research Collaboration (RCT HDRC) has embedded the Evidence Pie as a shared framework across the council.At its core are six equally valued types of evidence: lived experience; professional knowledge; organisational data; population data; impact measurement data and academic research.Rather than ranking these, the Evidence Pie gives them equal importance. This matters because it legitimises forms of evidence that are often undervalued, particularly qualitative insight from staff and residents, and creates a common language for conversations about evidence across services and sectors.The Evidence Pie is not simply a conceptual model. Its integration into training, leadership development and tailored support has helped embed evidenceinformed decision making as a shared responsibility across the council.The Evidence Pie has been used with officers, elected members, residents and partner organisations. It has shaped the work of an Overview and Scrutiny Working Group on child poverty, helping the group to systematically assess all six different types of evidence to create actionable recommendations for the council. It encourages council teams to reflect on which parts of the Evidence Pie they are drawing on and where gaps remain when developing policies, redesigning services or assessing impact.This process often highlights imbalances: strong organisational data, for example, but limited insight into lived experience or rich professional knowledge that has not been captured or shared systematically. By making these gaps visible, the framework helps teams to ask different questions.What do frontline staff know that has not been written down? What do residents experience that is not reflected in performance data? How might academic research change the framing of a problem or the options considered?These questions support more realistic and grounded decision-making, particularly in complex areas where simple solutions are unlikely.Organisational systems have evolved to support this cultural change. Council processes increasingly encourage services to draw on multiple forms of evidence when assessing need or impact, rather than relying on a single data source.Templates for completing annual service evaluations, for example, now require staff to demonstrate the range of evidence used to assess impact. Formal mechanisms, such as the Community Voice Team, are helping to ensure lived experience is gathered and used systematically, not just consulted at the margins.For the first time, residents with expertise by experience were formally included on an Overview and Scrutiny Working Group with full voting rights.Community insight is increasingly treated as core evidence, informing understanding of how policies and services work in practice and where they fall short.The Evidence Pie has also proved useful in partnership working. Many of the issues councils face – including tackling inequality and the wider determinants of health – cut across organisational boundaries.Using the Evidence Pie as a shared reference point helps partners articulate the evidence they bring and identify gaps collectively. This supports more joined-up approaches to evidence generation and reduces duplication, while recognising that no single organisation holds all the answers.For RCT HDRC's work on mapping preventative spend, for example, the Evidence Pie provided a shared framework for partnership working with local regional and national organisations. It helped the council and partners bring together financial data alongside practitioner insight, local knowledge and lived experience when defining prevention and identifying preventative activity.For local authorities facing complex challenges, from inequality to service redesign, the Evidence Pie offers a transferable approach that supports consistency without prescribing solutions.Its strength lies in creating a shared language and culture that enables better use of existing evidence, rather than placing additional burdens on already stretched teams.As more local authorities look for practical ways to strengthen evidenceinformed decision making, the experience in Rhondda Cynon Taf. shows the value of focusing on culture as well as capability.It provides a clear and adaptable model. Its growing uptake across the UK also suggests it has the potential to support wider system change, helping councils combine data, professional judgement, academic research and community insight to improve outcomes for residents.Amy Lloyd is research and evidence lead for Rhondda Cynon Taf Health Determinants Research Collaboration and research fellow at the Wales Centre for Public Policy

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HEALTH

Using the 'evidence pie' for better local government decision-making

By Amy Lloyd | 21 May 2026

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