Of the 32,844 neighbourhoods in England just two – that is 0.006% – of the healthiest are in the North East. That is perhaps the most shocking finding of all from this North East Bylines detailed analysis of official statistics as we continue our exploration of the English Indices of Deprivation (IoD).
Among other shocks and surprises outlined below Northumberland, despite its national park and 40-mile coastal area of outstanding natural beauty, is the most deprived of the North East’s council areas as far as the living environment is concerned and ranks as 61st most deprived out of 151 nationally.
The IoD ranks England’s 32,844 neighbourhoods according to seven “domains of deprivation” each weighted to contribute a given percentage to the overall ranking and divides the results into deciles (tenths). Areas with the largest proportion of its neighbourhoods in decile 1 are the most deprived and in decile 10 the least.
The seven domains are income (22.5% of the overall ranking), employment (22.5%), education (13.5%), health (13.5%), crime (9.3%), barriers to housing and services (9.3%) and living environment (9.3%). The seven domains are further broken down into 39 indicators. There are two supplementary indices covering income deprivation among children up to 15 and among old people aged 60 and over.
Income, employment and the two supplementary indices were dealt with last time.
Health and disability
Perhaps the most shocking of all the deprivations suffered by people in the North East is in the field of health and disability, not just qualitatively because of the effect it has on people’s lives but quantitively because of how widespread it is, as captured by the IoD. The region has so much bad health and so little good.
The domain of deprivation taking in health and disability measures years of potential life lost (under age 75 from any cause); work-limiting morbidity and disability; emergency admissions to hospital; and mental health indicators. It divides the results into deciles (tenths)
The region is the location of 1,656 of England’s 32,844 neighbourhoods – roughly 5% of the total – and is home to a disproportionately large share of neighbourhoods in the most deprived health decile. If its neighbourhoods were spread evenly across all the deciles it would have 165 among the most health deprived (and every other domain of deprivation); in fact, it has 457 – almost 2.8 times what might be expected.
Middlesbrough is a bottom-end regional outlier with 57% of its neighbourhoods in the nation’s 1st (most deprived) health and disability decile, though it is still not as unhealthy as Blackpool, Liverpool and Knowsley.
Perhaps even more shocking, as mentioned above, at the least deprived end of the health and disability scale only two neighbourhoods in the entire North East are in the 10th (least deprived) decile. They are Neville’s Cross South in Durham and Dene & South Gosforth in Newcastle.
Northumberland has nine neighbourhoods in the 9th decile, Stockton has two and North Tyneside one. Of the other districts in the region, Darlington, Gateshead, Hartlepool and Redcar & Cleveland have no neighbourhoods higher than the 8th decile, South Tyneside’s none higher than the 7th and Middlesbrough and Sunderland none higher than the 6th most deprived decile.
Education and skills
As we will see from the 2021 Census to be discussed in Part 4 of this series, the North East population is the least highly educated in England. The IoD breaks this down by local authority and Middlesbrough, yet again, performs worst in the region, with the third highest proportion nationally of the 10% most deprived neighbourhoods in England.
Middlesbrough is followed by Sunderland (22nd most deprived), Hartlepool (24th), Newcastle (25th), Darlington (26th) and Redcar and Cleveland (29th). North Tyneside has the lowest proportion of neighbourhoods in the most educationally deprived decile, being the 92nd most deprived out of 151 in England.
This domain of deprivation falls into two sub-domains: one relating to children and young people and one relating to adult skills. The domain relating to children measures Key Stages 2 & 4 attainment, secondary school absences, the proportion staying on above the age of 16 and the proportion under 21 not going into higher education. The adult skills sub-domain measures the proportion of adults of working age with no or low qualifications and the proportion of working age who cannot speak English or speak it well.
Middlesbrough’s education and skills problem is spread across the generations. While the town has a disappointing 29 of its 86 neighbourhoods in the 10% most educationally deprived for children and young people and only six in the least deprived, the situation for adult skills is even worse, with 33 neighbourhoods among the most deprived and just one among the least deprived.
Nomis, a branch of the Office for National Statistics (ONS), shows that Middlesbrough’s relative position has not improved since the IoD was published in 2019. In 2020 (latest available) the proportion of adults in the town aged 16-64 with NVQ Level 4 (degree or equivalent) was only 31%, the lowest in the region, and the proportion with no qualifications was 12.2%, the highest. In contrast, Newcastle had 44.4% with Level 4 and North Tyneside had only 4.8% with no qualifications.
The North East as a region had the lowest proportion of Level 4s, at 34.4%, compared with the England average of 42.9%, and the second highest proportion of adults with no qualifications after the West Midlands, with 8.1% compared to the England average of 6.2%.
Educational attainment in Newcastle is polarised. While over 44% of its population aged 16-64 have NVQ Level 4 (degree or equivalent), which is the highest in the North East, and above the regional and national averages of 34.% and 43.2% respectively, it is a very different story at the bottom of the scale. The city has 10.4% of its 16-64 population with no qualifications at all, which is also the highest figure in the region. The regional average is 8.2% and the national average 6.4%.
Barriers to housing and services
This domain sees the deprivation rankings completely overturned. Sixteen of the local authorities with the most of their neighbourhoods in the 10% most deprived nationally are London boroughs. In Newham an astonishing 100% of neighbourhoods fall into this category.
Hartlepool, Middlesbrough, Redcar & Cleveland, Newcastle, North Tyneside, Sunderland and Gateshead have no neighbourhoods at all in the most deprived 10th by barriers to housing and services.
The worst positioned area in the North East is Northumberland, the 32nd most deprived nationally, with 56 neighbourhoods in the most geographically deprived neighbourhoods in England. It is followed, well behind, by Darlington (81st), Stockton (95th), South Tyneside (101st) and County Durham (102nd). All other parts of the North East are clustered in a least-deprived group at 117th. This clustering is a consequence of the fact that the IoD methodology is designed to reliably distinguish between areas at the most deprived end of the distribution but not at the least deprived end.
The barriers to housing and services domain measures the physical and financial accessibility of housing and local services. The indicators fall into two sub-domains: geographical barriers, which relate to the physical proximity of local services such as a Post Office, primary school, general store or supermarket and GP surgery; and wider barriers which include access to housing such as affordability, overcrowding and homelessness.
Northumberland performs so relatively badly because, as a large county containing remote rural areas, it is affected by geographical barriers to services; it actually has four of the top 10 most geographically deprived neighbourhoods in England, including part of Haltwhistle ward, which is the most deprived neighbourhood in the country in this respect. But it has no neighbourhoods at all in the top three most deprived deciles for wider barriers including affordability and 48 in the least deprived.
Living environment
Most places in the North East are among the best in England as far as the living environment is concerned, according to the IoD. Eight of the local authority areas in the region have no neighbourhoods at all in the worst decile – Hartlepool, Middlesbrough, Stockton, Darlington, North Tyneside, South Tyneside, Sunderland and Gateshead. But not Northumberland, which, surprisingly is the 61st most deprived out of 151 in England on this measure. Redcar & Cleveland is 118th most deprived, Newcastle 117th and County Durham 115th most deprived.
It is notable that apart from Newcastle the council areas judged by the IoD to tend towards the more deprived end of the scale all have large rural areas. A clue to why this is so is to be found in the indicators used to calculate deprivation. We find that bad housing in a quite small but significant number of Northumberland’s neighbourhoods is dragging the county down (see below).
The indicators for the living environment domain fall into two sub-domains. The outdoors living environment measures of air quality and road traffic accidents, while the indoors living environment measures the quality of housing, including housing in poor condition and lacking central heating, These may seem to some a fairly limited and arbitrary range of indicators for determining how deprived a place’s living environment is, particularly in such a beautiful county as Northumberland. It is however the living environment, not the visitor environment, that is being measured.
Outdoor living environment
Step out of the door in many parts of the North East and you’ll find yourself in a relatively good, or at least decent, living environment. By that, as we saw above, the IoD means it is relatively unpolluted and has safe roads. Of 1,656 neighbourhoods in the region, only three have outdoor living environments (measuring air quality and road traffic accidents) among the 10% most deprived in England. They are all in Newcastle.
Among the second most deprived decile by this measure, Gateshead has ten neighbourhoods and Middlesbrough four. North Tyneside and Northumberland have none in the most deprived 50%, with their most deprived neighbourhoods by this measure – four and three respectively – falling in the sixth most deprived decile nationally.
At the other end of the scale, the local authority with the most neighbourhoods in the 10th decile, the least deprived, is County Durham, with 155, though it is again to be born in mind that has the most neighbourhoods in total. Middlesbrough and Gateshead have no neighbourhoods among the least deprived; their least deprived neighbourhoods are in the 9th most deprived decile, with just one and six respectively.
Indoors living environment.
Even without taking account of the North East’s glorious coast and country, its world heritage sites and its listed buildings, some parts of the North East score quite well for their outdoor living environment. It is a different story for the indoor environment – the quality of housing.
It is an astonishing statistic buried within the IoD that explains why Northumberland performs worst for living environment overall in the whole North East, in spite of its desirable executive estates and picturesque hill and coastal villages: it has by far the greatest proportion of neighbourhoods in the most environmentally deprived 10% in the indoors sub-domain.
Its 24 such neighbourhoods are as many as the rest of the region combined. County Durham comes closest with six but has a much larger number of neighbourhoods altogether – 324 compared with Northumberland’s 197. At the other end of the scale Darlington, Hartlepool, North Tyneside, South Tyneside and Stockton have no neighbourhood at all in the worst 10% nationally for indoor living environment and Sunderland has none in the worst 20%.
The condition of Northumberland’s housing stock is highly polarised. While it has by far the largest proportion of the worst housing in the North East, in also has one of the largest shares of the least deprived. There are 89 neighbourhoods in the county among the least deprived deciles nationally judged on the indoor living environment, behind only Durham, with 184 (but many more neighbourhoods in total) and surprisingly perhaps, Sunderland, which has 121 least deprived.
There seems to be an unexplained inconsistency in the statistics relating to the condition of the housing stock in the region. Central heating is one pf the factors taken into account by the IoD when rating the North East poorly for the indoor living environment; but as we will see in Part 6 of this series, according to the 2021 Census 99.2% of homes in the region do have central heating.
Crime
Middlesbrough and Hartlepool are the two worst places in the North East for crime. Middlesbrough has the third highest proportion of its neighbourhoods in the worst 10% nationally for crime and Hartlepool has the 12th highest. Stockton has the best crime record in the region – but still not great – coming 64th in the table out of 151.
These findings by the IoD came in the same year as Cleveland Police was branded as failing by HM Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services after a period of scandals and six changes of chief constable in as many years. It has since been judged as improving and was taken out of “special measures”, or enhanced monitoring, in September 2023.
Other areas in the North East ranked as Darlington 16th worst for crime out of 151 nationally, Newcastle 22nd, Gateshead 33rd, Sunderland 35th, County Durham 43rd, Redcar & Cleveland 45th, Northumberland 45th, North Tyneside 54th and South Tyneside 61st
The crime domain measures the risk of personal and material victimisation at local level as a result of violence, burglary, theft and criminal damage.
*In Part 4 of this series, we will turn to the 2021 Census to see what it can tell us about the North East and its people, including learning more about our health.
