Poverty (Made in England): New maps, old stories
A mural in Jaywick Essex, alerting locals to the dangers of loan sharks
By Tim Thorlby
5 mins read
This blog explores and reflects on the new maps of deprivation in England, published in late 2025.
Buried in all of the new statistics are important stories of both failure and hope.
English Indices of Deprivation: a brief guide
Since 2000, the government has been publishing an ‘index of deprivation’ for England every half decade or so. It is an attempt to measure and map – down to neighbourhood level – the nature and extent of deprivation across the nation. The latest index was published recently; the 2025 English Indices of Deprivation.
The new index updates the 2019 version and provides an important resource for anyone interesting in designing or funding public services, tackling poverty, promoting regeneration or reducing inequality.
They are a sophisticated measure; I will not delve into the details here, but they actually comprise seven different measures of different aspects of life which influence how deprived an area might be, or not:
1. Income Deprivation
2. Employment Deprivation
3. Education, Skills and Training Deprivation
4. Health Deprivation and Disability
5. Crime
6. Barriers to Housing and Services
7. Living Environment Deprivation
These measures are also combined to produce an overall ‘score’. All scores are also ranked.
Data is published for individual neighbourhoods, of which there are 33,755 in England (with an average population of 1,600 people). Data is also produced for local authority areas. These provide a relative sense of where one area sits in relation to the rest.
Yes, that’s a lot of data.
If you are new to this, there is a very easy to use interactive map, where you can put in your postcode and see how your own neighbourhood fares on all of this.
This blog is not a technical guide (you will be relieved to hear!) but if you want to know more, it is all explained in splendid detail on the MHCLG website.
But what does it all mean?
There is much that can be said about all of this and more stories will emerge as the nation’s statisticians get to work analysing the data and putting it to work.
Here, I want to pull out four short stories for you.
Story 1: Don’t shoot the messenger
In August 2025, President Donald Trump famously fired the head of the USA’s Bureau of Labour Statistics because she had had the temerity to publish employment statistics that showed a slowdown in employment in the USA. Trump raged that by publishing the data, she was “making me look bad”.
Trying to manage an economy without reliable and accurate data will make it even harder to create jobs, that that didn’t seem to bother him.
So, the publication of a national set of data about poverty and deprivation in England is to be welcomed. It is robust, transparent and freely available. The messages are not always happy ones or even welcome, but we should celebrate living in a democracy where a commitment to accurate data still holds. Long may it continue to do so.
Story 2: Down by the sea
The most deprived neighbourhood in England is in Jaywick on the western fringe of Clacton-on-Sea in Essex. Much of the neighbourhood is a private estate, originally built by a developer in the 1920s as cheap holiday homes, but which ended up being used as permanent homes. Despite lovely views of the sea, the dilapidated houses and narrow, poorly maintained lanes give it more the air of a shanty town than a holiday retreat. It has won the unwelcome label of ‘most deprived neighbourhood’ in several successive Indices of Deprivation. Its local MP is currently Nigel Farage, Reform.
The most deprived local authority in England? Blackpool. Hastings, down in East Sussex, also features in the top ten most deprived areas, so two coastal areas feature at the bottom of the pile.
I checked out the little seaside neighbourhood where I grew up, in Skegness – also amongst the most deprived 15% neighbourhoods. Local MP? Richard Tice, Reform.
I have written recently about the plight of our many coastal communities, so I won’t repeat it here, but that blog explores the issues on our coasts.
I don’t believe that the gap between England’s coastal communities and the rest of the country has narrowed much, if at all, during my lifetime. More of their residents seek ever more extreme answers in their frustration. A bold approach is needed.
Story 3: Health is wealth
The other gap that hasn’t narrowed during my lifetime is the famous ‘North - South’ divide, the wealth divide is still widening as I write. A rapid analysis of the new deprivation stats by Oxford Economics[1] shows that the pattern of deprivation between North and South has not changed since the last deprivation index in 2019 – no progress in more than half a decade.
One of the key themes emerging is the growing importance of ill-health in holding back the economy of the North of England. The health divide is part of the wealth divide.
A major new study for Health Equity North[2] has highlighted the need to see investment in health as core to our national economic strategy.
Since 2018, the whole country has seen a rise in the number of people not able to work because of ill-health, turbo-charged by the pandemic (a rise in ‘economic inactivity’). It has reached a record high, but it has risen twice as fast in the North of England as elsewhere. If people in the North could recover their health and return to work at the same levels seen in the South of England, it would £18.4 billion to the national economy every year. The report identifies the close links between health, the performance of public services and economic growth.
What holds for the North almost certainly holds for our coastal areas too, experiencing similar issues in health and under-powered economic growth.
This is partly about investment and partly about having the institutional freedom to organise a response; local government, the NHS and its partners being able to respond to local conditions and innovate.
Story 4: Show me the money
The government’s biggest response to deprivation so far has been to launch a £5 billion ‘Pride in Place’ programme across England, giving £20m each to 250 neighbourhoods over ten years. This has been influenced by the work of the Independent Commission on Neighbourhoods. I’m sure this might help, but I doubt it will fix much. I note that the £1.2 billion Towns Fund by the previous Conservative Government achieved very little, nor did it begin to see off Nigel Farage.
A study by Cambridge Econometrics and SQW for the Northern Powerhouse[3] estimated that the scale of investment needed across the North of England – i.e. big enough to actually make serious in-roads to the north-south divide – was approx. £28 billion per year, every year for 25 years.
This is the scale of investment that the German government have been making to close the gap between the old West and East Germany. Since 1990, sustained investment has closed more than half of the economic gap between West and East over a 30 year period - although a gap remains, together with structural economic issues that are proving slower to shift. The point here is that it is possible to deliver national economic change in Europe today, but it takes a long time and a lot of investment.
The £0.5 billion per year of the devolved Pride in Place doesn’t really seem enough, does it?
Looking forward
On the face of it, these are not particularly encouraging stories. I don’t wish to leave it there, though.
The new data is a timely reminder that the challenges remain and they helpfully point to where we need to focus our attention.
The stories are a reminder that making progress on deprivation will require political will to make it happen. Most poverty and deprivation in the UK today is man-made and can be un-made.
I’m not sure there will be much progress on the economics affecting Jaywick, our coasts or the North of England until we can build political momentum to push for change. There will no new economics without a new politics. We need to build strong coalitions for change in the North and along our coasts.
This is not about party politics, it’s about civil society, business, and politicians finding common cause to work together. We need the energy and insurgence of populism but without the unpleasant edge that comes with Reform’s particular brand of populism (and its false premise that immigration is to blame for everything). Where can we find a more inclusive, constructive populism?
The late Pope Francis urged us to consider the same question in his book ‘Let us Dream’, written during the lockdowns of 2020.
“This is a moment to dream big, to rethink our priorities – what we value, what we want, what we seek – and commit to act in our daily life on what we have dreamed of….
The health of a society can be judged by its periphery. A periphery that is abandoned, sidelined, despised, and neglected shows an unstable, unhealthy society that cannot long survive without major reforms…
Fraternity is the new frontier.”
It is a call not to give up, or turn our back on politics, but to engage and build coalitions for the common good.
There is no quick fix here, or easy answers, rather a lifetime of work.
And why should we do it?
Because that’s who we are.
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Notes
[1] See: https://www.oxfordeconomics.com/resource/deprivation-in-england-whats-changed-and-whats-stayed-the-same/
[2] Simpson, J. et al (2025) Health for Wealth 2025: Building a healthier North will boost UK productivity, Health Equity North, Newcastle | Access: https://www.healthequitynorth.co.uk/app/uploads/HEALTH-FOR-WEALTH-2025-EMBARGOED-FINAL-VERSION.pdf
[3] Cambridge Econometrics & SQW (2023) The Northern Powerhouse Independent Economic Review 2023 update, Transport for the North | Access: https://transportforthenorth.com/wp-content/uploads/NPIER-2023-Summary-Report-For-Final-Publication.pdf