During the local election campaign, you may have seen a rather flattering claim doing the rounds. Starting with local MP Josh Fenton Glynn the news was quickly shared by local election Labour candidates and Labour groups across Calderdale.
Calderdale, apparently, was one of the best places in England to raise a family.
Lovely news, you might think. And, on the face of it, exactly the sort of thing any council or political party would want to shout about.
The problem is the date.
When Calderdale Inside Out followed the claim back, it appeared to lead not to a fresh 2026 study, but to research originally published in 2019 by Oxford Home Schooling. That ranking placed Calderdale fourth in England, based on a fairly narrow set of measures: Ofsted ratings, school-place availability and housing affordability.
Then, in April 2026, the same ranking seemed to pop back up online through a news aggregator site based in Hong Kong. From there, it found its way into local political campaigning.
And that is where this gets interesting.
Because this is not really a story about whether Calderdale is a good place to bring up children. Plenty of people would say it is. Many of us live here because we love the place, not because a spreadsheet told us to.
The more useful question is this: when politicians share a statistic during an election campaign, how much care should they take to check where it came from?
Especially when that statistic is being used not just as good news, but as evidence of a political record.
In the episode, we follow the trail from the original 2019 ranking, through its reappearance online in April 2026, to the way it was shared locally during the election campaign.
We also look at Calderdale Council’s own more recent performance data. And, as you might expect, the current picture is not quite as neat as a social media graphic.
Some indicators are moving in the right direction. Others are not. Some put Calderdale in a much less flattering position when compared with similar councils.
That does not mean the original 2019 ranking was wrong in its own context.
But it does mean voters are entitled to ask a fairly basic question:
if a political claim is based on old data, should that be made clear?
Calderdale Labour has been approached for comment.
The paper trail
For anyone who wants to check the sources, these are the key links behind the episode:
The original 2019 article: Revealed: the best and worst places to raise children in England — Inside Conveyancing / Oxford Home Schooling.
Read the 2019 articleThe April 2026 aggregator article: Best and worst places in England to raise a family - full list — OB News / Newspoint, published 9 April 2026.
Read the April 2026 articleCalderdale Council’s Q3 2025/26 Corporate Performance Report: the council’s own latest published performance report.
Download the Q3 reportThe social media post: screenshot included above.
Who shared the data (from our research): Cllr Adam Wilkinson; Cllr Sarah Courtney; Cllr Scott Patient; Cllr Kelly Thornham; Stuart Cairney (Labour candidate); Calderdale Labour; Skircoat Labour Councillors; North Halifax Labour.
The full story is in the podcast.
