coastal deprivation

Jeremy Corbyn promises to fix ‘blighted’ coastal towns

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The recent (late September) release of the English Indices of Deprivation 2019 has confirmed yet again that some of the most deprived places in England are small coastal neighbourhoods. It looks like Jeremy Corbyn has wised up to this issue. According to this article.

Coastal communities have been “blighted” by “nine years of vicious austerity and Tory cuts”, Jeremy Corbyn has said in a speech.

Speaking in Hastings, East Sussex, the Labour leader also pledged to end the “evil of in-work poverty”.

But the Conservatives say seaside areas can benefit from a £3.6bn fund.

BBC analysis this week found that workers living in costal parts of Britain earn £1,600 less on average per year than those living inland.

The research also found that two-thirds of coastal areas had seen a real-terms fall in wages since 2010.

In his speech, Mr Corbyn said poverty and inequality were “not inevitable”. 

“In the fifth-richest country in the world, no-one should be forced to rely on a food bank to feed their family, no-one should be sleeping rough on our streets, and nobody should be working for poverty wages,” he said.

Citing parliamentary research, he said one in five adults in Hastings and Rye could be in receipt of universal credit when it is fully rolled out.

Decline of the British seaside resort as coastal communities plagued by heroin

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Many seaside locations and their wider hinterlands have a deep rural context. This article therefore makes depressing reading. It tells us

British beach resorts used to be glamorous destinations known for their nightlife and natural beauty.

But the decline of the British seaside holiday has seen the coastal communities plagued by heroin, new figures show.

Beach resorts are now notorious for poverty and deprivation – and some of them have become the sites for the highest rate of drug death in the country.

Their slide into poverty and drug abuse has been highlighted by the Office for National Statistics, which said six of the top 10 locations for heroin deaths are in coastal resorts.

Its statistics show that Blackpool has had the highest number of deaths relating to heroin or morphine misuse since 2010, a figure which has now risen to 14 per 100,000 people, almost double the figure for the second-most seriously affected area, Burnley.

The national average is 1.7 in England and 2.3 in Wales.

Seaside towns make up more than half of the top 10, with Bournemouth, Portsmouth, Hastings, Thanet and Swansea also experiencing among the highest numbers of deaths.

The other locations are Burnley, Reading, Hyndburn and Neath Port Talbot.

The ONS said evidence suggested high levels of death due to drug misuse was linked to deprivation, which in the case of seaside towns, was likely to be down to their decline amid the rise in popularity of foreign holidays and cheap flights abroad.

“Blackpool’s fortunes have been in decline since traditional coastal holidays fell out of favour in the 1960s, with the advent of package holidays abroad,” it said.

It highlighted research by Public Health England which found that “social factors, including housing, employment and deprivation, are associated with substance misuse and these social factors moderate drug treatment outcomes”.

Blackpool is the fourth-most deprived area out of 326 districts and unitary authorities in England.

Across England and Wales deaths due to heroin or morphine have risen by almost eight times since 1993, and by two-thirds since 2012, to reach 1,209 by 2016.

Figures released last year showed that the average age group of those dying from heroin use had become older, as the “Trainspotting generation” who became addicts in the 1980s and 1990s, aged.

The overall highest rate of death from drug abuse in 2016 was among people aged between 40 and 49, overtaking those aged 30 to 3