Renewing the Fabric

Britain’s deep economic inequality has now largely been accepted as part of the status quo. We act as though it is a natural feature of a modern and dynamic society. Yet it wasn’t always this way: as the social geographer Danny Dorling has set out in his extensive work on the subject, Britain in the mid-1970s was one of the most economically equal countries in Europe. Just 20 years later, following the economic revolution of the Thatcher government, we had become one of the most unequal. Since then, overall income inequality has barely changed.

There has been some acknowledgment by policymakers of the interregional disparities we see across the UK – including the last Conservative government’s attempts to “level up”. Less well understood are the stark geographic inequalities that can exist within a local area. The Geographic Data Service has created a set of maps, based on Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) datasets, which are extraordinarily helpful here. They measure relative deprivation in very small geographic areas, with areas in the least deprived decile shown in bright blue, those that are most deprived in bright red, and areas in the middle in pale yellow.

These maps paint a vivid picture of the economic divisions seen in much of England – and particularly the south. Many southern cities – including my hometown of Brighton & Hove, but also Oxford, Southampton, and Bristol – are a patchwork of heavily concentrated dark red deprivation next to large areas of bright blue prosperity. Inequality in the UK is not just a story of poverty in the north and affluence in the south. It is also about towns and cities that are deeply divided – some would say segregated – along economic lines.

The impact of this division is becoming increasingly catastrophic for our communities, with health outcomes and life expectancies drastically different depending on the area of town you live in; huge gaps in educational attainment between deprived and affluent areas; and poorer communities which simply don’t interact with people from richer areas just a few miles away.

For many of us in local government, it is clear that these divisions are not sustainable, and must be tackled if we want a more cohesive society. However, as the prime minister said in his speech at Labour party conference, the country is not irretrievably broken – and Labour must offer hope, and genuine solutions, to get us out of this mess. Local and regional authorities are well-placed to tackle this challenge – and we must empower them to do so.

In Brighton & Hove, the Labour council has been tackling inequality as one of our four key objectives since being elected in May 2023. In our first year in office, we established a Brighton & Hove “Fairness Fund”, which used money from a budget underspend to directly support residents struggling to afford the basics. Our in-house team of welfare, revenues & business support officers, alongside our active local third sector, are uniquely placed to direct these funds to the people that need them most.

We also introduced a groundbreaking education policy that gave priority in school admissions to those pupils eligible for free school meals, creating a fairer system in which background and postcode are not the only determinant of a school’s intake.

We tackled a long-running unfairness in transport, where pupils from one of our most deprived areas had to pay for long bus journeys, despite the route not being walkable. They no longer have to pay. And we made a change in policy so that those families whose children are educated outside of school, often because of severe special educational needs and disabilities, can receive vouchers equivalent to the free school meals they would normally be entitled to.

All of these policies were targeted at specific local issues, because local councillors and campaigners understand their place and their communities. Does anyone really imagine that officials in Whitehall would be well-placed to craft these kinds of interventions?

England lags behind our European neighbours in terms of local and regional power. More money and decisions are taken at the national level in this country than in almost any other European nation. Many of us believe that it’s no coincidence that we are also one of the most economically divided countries in the continent.

National policies on tax, public services and welfare will be vital in tackling inequality across the country and improving the lives of ordinary people. But to ensure that our communities, towns and cities are more equal and harmonious, we need to ensure that local and regional governments have the right powers, and the right funding, to be able to shape their local areas.

Which is why it is so important that the government is proposing to devolve powers on skills, transport and economic development to a newly created mayoral authority here in Sussex, with similar plans being drawn up around the country. As Fabians and Labour members, we should advocate for more devolution of power, and for mayors to use these powers to tackle inequalities and strengthen our communities. In doing so, we can provide hope, restore faith in government, and drive genuine local and national renewal.

Image credit: Rob Oo via flickr