This is the next instalment of the serialisation of my book – The Teeth of our Exertions – full details of which can be found here.
Whilst we may recognise the need to go, it bears asking what is a deprived community? My town of Oldham, for example, was at one time – according to the Office for National Statistics – the most deprived in England.[1] But what exactly does that mean? Oldham doesn’t really look or feel anything like the Speke area of Liverpool, which is different again to the London borough of Tower Hamlets, which is similarly unlike West Bromwich in the Black Country. All of these places might rightly be considered ‘deprived communities’ but, on the face of it, they all look quite different.
Whilst poverty refers to a lack of money on which to live, deprivation refers to a lack of resources and opportunities. The government use the Indices of Deprivation that measure seven different markers of deprived communities. The overall Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) combines these seven indices to provide an overall score for the relative level of deprivation experienced in each local neighbourhood. When Oldham was named ‘most deprived town in England’[2] it was because it contained the greatest number of areas with the highest levels of deprivation according to the IMD measure (see table below). [3]
| % | ||
| Town/City | Proportion of LSOAs in the most deprived 20% | Proportion of LSOAs in the least deprived 20% |
| Oldham | 65.2 | 4.5 |
| West Bromwich | 62.8 | 0.0 |
| Liverpool | 59.4 | 2.0 |
| Walsall | 57.5 | 10.0 |
| Birmingham | 57.5 | 0.8 |
| Nottingham | 57.3 | 4.7 |
| Middlesbrough | 55.9 | 5.4 |
| Salford | 55.6 | 0.0 |
| Birkenhead | 54.5 | 1.8 |
| Rochdale | 53.8 | 9.2 |
Whilst the IMD measure is useful in telling us what the relative poverty, educational attainment and employment opportunities of an area happen to be, amongst other things, it still doesn’t tell us much about what the local area is like. Speke, for example, is predominantly white British. The Glodwick area of Oldham is overwhelmingly South Asian. Other areas again, such as Smethwick in the West Midlands, would be much more ethnically mixed.[4] Along with ethnic differences often come other issues to do with language and culture that monocultural deprived communities don’t tend to face.
Aside from the varying ethnic makeup of deprived communities, there are other differences. Areas full of Victorian mill housing have a distinctly different feel to purpose-built council estates. Such differences are even noticeable within the same town. The Glodwick area of Oldham, for example, is made up predominantly of rows and rows of red brick terraced houses lining the streets. By contrast, Fitton Hill – only half a mile away – is a council estate built during the 1950s and 60s. In contrast to Glodwick, Fitton Hill is overwhelmingly Caucasian. Even within the one town, two deprived communities feel different in terms of housing, ethnicity, language, community and, as a result, culture.
Moreover, areas of high deprivation either within, or near to, cities may well see a process of gentrification that, over time, removes much deprivation and changes the face of the community. During this process, however, deprived people live side by side with the more affluent. Although long-term residents may remain, house prices shoot up and stop the next generation being able to stay in the locality. Such places will often have a reputation for being rough that long outlasts the reality. A similar phenomenon can be observed near universities. Students rent cheap housing, remain in the area following graduation and begin gentrifying it over time. During this process, however, the area often remains fundamentally deprived whilst simultaneously seeing house prices driven up making the neighbourhood something of a mishmash.
The simple point I am labouring here is that the word ‘deprived’ only tells you so much. You cannot easily talk about church in deprived communities as though deprived communities are uniform things. A council estate is not the same as a deprived area full of privately owned homes. Somewhere full of rundown terraced houses is not the same as a purpose-built estate of newly constructed social houses. A deprived area in a bustling city suburb is not the same as a deprived community in a small town with no university. The differences in ethnic and religious makeup, housing, employment opportunities and potential for gentrification mean that the challenges within deprived communities are often as varied as the areas themselves.
[1] Office for National Statistics (2016), ‘Towns and Cities Analysis, England and Wales, March 2016’ accessed at https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/housing/articles/townsandcitiesanalysisenglandandwalesmarch2016/2016-03-18
[2] More recent figures, determining ‘most deprived’ according to different measures, still places Oldham as 13th most deprived borough in the country but now places Middlebrough as most deprived area in the UK cf. https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/inside-englands-most-deprived-town-18923302
[3] Office for National Statistic (2016), Op Cit.
[4] ONS (2011), Op Cit.