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Open Innovations is winding down and will no longer be commencing new work from May 2026.

Spring Newsletter 2025

Always #RadicallyOpen

Our mission is to be #RadicallyOpen, we like to share - so our newsletter is a short update and an invitation for you to take a look at our latest data projects and tools. Despite being a small, independent not-for-profit team, we fit a lot into our schedule. Everything we do is published on our website for others to use - these are just some of the most recent highlights. It's only a short read and could help you shortcut a project or task, so please read on and get in touch if you have any questions, ideas or just want to connect.

The Power of Local

In early 2025 we launched a new project called the "The power of local" in partnership with the Local Government Association. The project has been an experiment to collect stories of how our great Local Government institutions have delivered better outcomes than centralised approaches.

This is a great start and a huge win for local government. The next step for us is to dive deeper into the responses to understand the themes in more detail. For example, was budget a limiting factor in the success of the project? Does central government make it easier or harder to carry out the work?

The image is a horizontal bar chart. It shows the location of responses to a feedback form. The categories are English ITL1 regions. The North East has the most with 19, followed by Yorkshire and The Humber with 10, then London with 5. Every region has at least 1 response.
65% of responses came from the North of England (Yorkshire and The Humber, the North East and the North West).
Credit: Open Innovations
The image is a horizontal bar chart. The categories are the themes in responses to a survey. Community was the most common theme with 18 responses, followed by Social care with 12, and Health with 10.
Community, Social care and Health were the most common themes among the responses to our form.
Credit: Open Innovations

Bus tracking tool



A cartoon of buses
Credit: Amy Evans, Open Innovations

We love buses and public transport, we have worked on multiple projects across our 12 years trying to help make them more efficient for everyone. Our latest iteration tracks buses. 

Does your bus journey take longer than the timetable says on your commute to/from work? Do you want to know the best time of day to avoid long journeys? Do you wish you had evidence to back up your suspicions about slow bus routes? Well, with our new bus tracking tool, you can. We've collected live location data for the whole of England and we know there are lots of other use cases for our data. Check out your route with our tool, share with others and let us know what you think. This project was a labour of love and involved many hours of wrangling with data.

At the top is a map showing the route. Below that is a chart showing journeys between the Prince of Wales in Harrogate and Leeds bus station. There is a blue line showing the timetabled journey time; this is under 40 minutes before 6am, rises to 65 minutes in the morning rush hour, drops back to 49 minutes during the day, rises to 60 minutes in the evening rush before dropping down to 41 minutes in the evening. The real times are represented as dots. For most of the day, after 8am, the scatter of these points is generally above the timetabled time. The bus is roughly 5-10 minutes slower between 10am-5pm.
Our tool showing journeys between two bus stops on the route of the 36 bus from Harrogate to Leeds
Credit: Open Innovations / BODS

Constituencies hex maps

We think our UK Constituencies Hex Maps page is a fascinating and important asset in the Open Innovations Toolbox. Using Hex Maps to visualise open data, we can show emerging patterns and interesting analysis across the country on themes including the Economy, Transport, Health, Society, Environment & Energy. Recently we have produced some maps on who pays the most tax, which areas suffer the most from rail cancellations and where have the most fish & chip shops, pubs or post offices. The results make for interesting analysis. Please take a look, share, and let us know if you have any suggestions for open data sets to visualise in this way.

A list of recently updated visualisations on our Constituency Hex Maps site.
Credit: Open Innovations
  • A hex map showing the percentage of rail cancellations by UK Parliamentary Constituency
  • A hex map showing median income by UK Parliamentary Constituency
  • A hex map showing the number of fish and chip shops by UK Parliamentary Constituency
  • A hex map showing the number of pubs and bars by UK Parliamentary Constituency

World of Culture

We have become a bit of a specialist when it comes to helping organisations evaluate their cultural data output. Following on from our pioneering work with Leeds 2023, we are now working with Calderdale Council, Bradford 2025, and the North East Combined Authority/Northumbria University on various projects helping these organisations share and visualise their cultural data.

  • Bradford 2025 data dashboard landing page
  • A screenshot of the

Toolbox updates

Open Innovations is all about doing and sharing. Our Toolbox is a great example of this. It demonstrates just some of the tools we have designed and built that are free for all to use, share and learn from. This spring we have added a couple of new tools to our toolbox as well as keeping all the others updated with new releases of data or changes to boundaries etc.

  • We've created a standalone CSV Editor tool that lets you drag-and-drop your own local CSV file onto. The tool doesn't upload your CSV file anywhere; it does everything in the page.
  • Updated the Petitions Viewer to use Parliament's new API

Get in touch if there's a tool you'd like us to develop.

Open Innovations - what's next?

We will continue to be open, friendly and helpful, to deliver innovative solutions for our clients and interesting data analysis we think people will find interesting, which can help to make a difference and open up discussions. If you would like to make any suggestions for our mission led work, ask us to attend an event or conference, or share any of our knowledge, please get in touch. We are happy to help and share if we can. 

We also have a side project which is looking very interesting, we're getting on with building a National Data Library here in Leeds. We've had huge interest and support from the private and public sector, and it's growing fast. Learn more and join in!

The National Data Library will live at Temple Works, Leeds, LS11 9EH. For now, it is hosted online by

some of the team behind Open Innovations. Email Tom with questions.

Please get in touch or visit our website.