Non‑statutory guidance for public services boards and regional partnership boards: Assessments, data and evidence - 4. Joint expectations and areas of commonality

The expectations in this section have been developed collaboratively by a National Assessment and Advice Task Group, drawing on statutory guidance, previous cycles and feedback from partnerships. The expectations do not replace legal duties. Instead, they set out practical commitments that national bodies and local partnerships may wish to adopt to support clarity and alignment across the next assessment cycle.

National bodies understand the pressures that partnerships face and are committed to helping make the process manageable and purposeful. National bodies, are committed to:

• Provide clear, consistent and aligned advice informed by statutory guidance and emerging learning.
• Offer practical tools and resources to support proportionate and aligned approaches.
• Support access to core datasets, national indicators, research and future trends insight.
• Facilitate shared learning and peer support across regions.
• Encourage balanced approaches that blend quantitative data, qualitative insight and lived experience in a transparent and practical way.

PSBs and RPBs may wish to use these expectations to guide early planning and support a shared approach across the region. As partnerships, you should:

• Take a balanced and transparent approach to evidence, explaining how it shaped your conclusions.
• Coordinate engagement where feasible, using inclusive and bilingual methods and demonstrating how people’s input informed your assessment.
• Strengthen involvement by ensuring the voices of people who are seldom heard are proactively included, using proportionate, accessible and culturally sensitive methods.
• Draw on existing insight from communities, carers and service users, identifying any gaps in demographic or geographic coverage before undertaking new engagement.
• Apply Welsh language, equalities and socio‑economic considerations consistently and explicitly.
• Adopt proportionate, realistic methods, documenting assumptions and limitations clearly.
• Agree local expectations for drafting, evidence quality and analytical assurance.
• Explore shared approaches to futures and scenario planning where appropriate.
• Take a life course approach from early years to end of life to ensure comprehensive need of communities and ensure a focus on Palliative End of Life Care need (i.e. Start well, Live well, Age well, End Well).

This shared set of expectations helps create a clearer, more coherent approach across the two duties. It provides confidence about what national bodies will support, and clarity on how partnerships can approach their responsibilities in a way that is achievable and effective. It supports more consistent interpretation of evidence, reduces duplication, and strengthens the link between assessments and the plans that follow.

These expectations are not statutory, but they reflect good practice identified across Wales. Joint expectations can help create consistent standards and support clarity for those contributing to the assessments. These expectations support proportionate and balanced assessments that draw on multiple forms of evidence.

It is important that assessments are underpinned by a proportionate, balanced and transparent use of evidence and both national bodies and local partnerships have a role in facilitating this. Partnerships should draw on a broad range of evidence, including official statistics, administrative data, research, community insights, lived experience and environmental evidence, to develop a shared understanding of local well-being and care and support needs. Partnerships should prioritise the use of trusted, quality-assured and recognised sources of evidence, where possible, and the use of common datasets, indicators and definitions can help improve consistency across Wales and support comparison between places. Where alternative or locally generated evidence is used, partnerships should be transparent about methods used and any limitations. Annex C includes further guidance on different sources of data and evidence, their strengths and their limitations.

Assessments should focus on interpreting evidence rather than reproducing large volumes of data. The emphasis should be on explaining what the evidence shows, why it matters locally and how it helps, identifying strengths, challenges, inequalities and emerging trends. Partnerships should ensure that the findings, conclusions and priorities included with the assessments can be traced back to the data, research and evidence collected and analysed. In addition, assessments should outline the approach taken to data collection and analysis, including any limitations or considerations that may affect how the evidence can be interpreted.

To support transparency partnerships may wish to maintain a supporting data catalogue or similar resource to record key datasets, research and insight used in the assessment. This enables assessments to remain focused on strategic interpretation and collective priorities, while ensuring transparency about the evidence base. A clear approach to evidence collection, analysis and presentation  helps strengthen consistency across partnerships, reduce duplication, identify evidence gaps and support more informed, future-focused decision making. To assist with this Annex C includes further information on approaches to data and evidence as part of the assessment process.