Member Article

Britain on the brink of poverty

New data has found that large areas of East Anglia are among areas of Britain that are most likely to slip into poverty if the economy worsens.
Information services company Experian used the Mosaic system to map the areas of the country which are most likely to be affected by the current economic climate. Experian’s Bruno Rost told the Guardian: “In essence, what we’ve done is removed people that automatically fall into the most deprived/poorest categories and focused on those that are working but suffering high levels of financial stress and have stated that they are finding it very difficult to cope with their current income.”
The list is made up from, among others, self employed trades people, small communities, single people, young owners and private renters in inner city terraces and older families in low value housing in traditional industrial areas.
Torbay is ranked as the most likely to slip into poverty with 37% of households on the edge of poverty. Findings for East Anglia show that in Lincoln, 10.9% of low income families occupy poor quality older terraces, a figure which is second only to Hyndburn in Lancashire. In Ipswich, 14% of households are on the edge of poverty and in Great Yarmouth, this figure rises to 22%.
However the way the index has been constructed means that just because one council is higher than another in one area it doesn’t mean that they are higher across all aspects of the data. Lincoln is actually placed 82nd out of 406 councils, Ipswich comes in at number 188 and Great Yarmouth at number 47.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Francesca Dent .