Does Council Tax Valuation Band (CTVB) correlate with Under-Privileged Area 8 (UPA8) score and could it be a better 'Jarman Index'?

BACKGROUND Widespread scepticism persists on the use of the Under-Privileged Area (UPA8) score of Jarman in distributing supplementary resources to so-attributed 'deprived' UK general practices. The search for better 'needs' markers continues. Having already shown that Council Tax Valuation Band (CTVB) is a predictor of UK GP workload, we compare, here, CTVB of residence of a random sample of patients with their respective 'Jarman' scores. METHODS Correlation coefficient is calculated between (i) the CTVB of residence of a randomised sample of patients from an English general practice and (ii) the UPA8 scores of the relevant enumeration districts in which they live. RESULTS There is a highly significant correlation between the two measures despite modest study size of 478 patients (85% response). CONCLUSIONS The proposal that CTVB is a marker of deprivation and of clinical demand should be examined in more detail: it correlates with 'Jarman', which is already used in NHS resource allocation. But unlike 'Jarman', CTVB is simple, objective, and free of the problems of Census data. CTVB, being household-based, can be aggregated at will.