Special Report - A game of two halves

Jamie Carpenter, Regeneration & Renewal, 18 July 2008

Division: The contrasting fortunes of neighbourhoods in Blackburn (left) and Newcastle (right)

Children from the St Anne's RC Primary School are the first to cross Blackburn's gleaming Wainwright Bridge. In fact, they are also the second, third and fourth group to cross the £12 million bridge, as they cycle back and forth over the new road link to pose for photographers. Finally, the bridge, which is intended to catalyse the regeneration of a large area of the town centre, is opened to traffic. "It's of great symbolic importance to the town," justice secretary Jack Straw, MP for Blackburn, tells me at the ceremony. "It will become a symbol of the new Blackburn."

The bridge is visible from the Bank Top area high above the town centre. Here, the shiny twin arches of the bridge neatly frame the sign of a B&Q DIY superstore close to the new crossing. Under the Government's housing market renewal pathfinder scheme to tackle low housing demand, some properties in Bank Top have been refurbished, and others demolished and replaced with smart new homes. As part of the work, families in some of the homes have been given gardens for the first time. But many of those gardens are now unkempt and overgrown.

Waqar Hussain, a local community worker involved in a project to improve Pakistani boys' educational performance, admits that the new homes in Bank Top are better than those they replaced. But he says that the physical regeneration in the area has done little to tackle the underlying causes of deprivation. "The people who live there are still the same people," he says. "They don't have lawnmowers."

According to a Regeneration & Renewal analysis of the Government's Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) - an official ranking of deprivation across England - deprivation in Blackburn is increasing. Blackburn with Darwen is one of five North-West areas in a table of the ten local authorities in deprived areas that have seen the greatest negative change between 2004 and 2007 (see methodology box, p21). Four of those North-West councils - Blackburn with Darwen, Burnley, Pendle and Hyndburn - are in the East Lancashire area. The fifth is nearby Blackpool. The other councils in the bottom ten are Penwith in Cornwall, three outer London boroughs and one inner London borough (see infographic, right).

Meanwhile, a table of the ten deprived council areas that have seen the greatest positive change on the IMD between 2004 and 2007 is dominated by those in the North-East. The ten includes five from the region: Gateshead, Hartlepool, Stockton-on-Tees, North Tyneside and Newcastle upon Tyne. The biggest improvers table also includes Nottingham, two Yorkshire local authorities - Leeds and Calderdale - and is topped by two inner London boroughs: Camden and Westminster.

Our analysis reveals that, among deprived council areas in England, Blackburn with Darwen has seen the third biggest increase in deprivation over the period. According to the IMD, in 2004 Blackburn with Darwen was the 34th most disadvantaged local authority area in England, while in 2007, it was the 17th most deprived. Sayyed Osman, Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council's director of housing and neighbourhoods, says the loss of manufacturing in East Lancashire is a key factor behind the increasing deprivation. "What you've seen over the last ten to 20 years is the gradual decline in the manufacturing of goods in this country," he says. "In Blackburn, those manufacturing jobs have typically been replaced by jobs in the service sector, which do not pay as well." Waqar Hussain adds that, in Blackburn's Asian communities, a lack of aspiration leads many young residents to settle for low-skilled jobs. "They haven't grown up in an environment where they have the aspiration to achieve anything higher," he says.

Another problem faced by East Lancashire is a graduate brain drain, says Ian Clinton, principal of Blackburn College, which has just over 11,000 students on its roll. Of the 870 students who got degree-level qualifications from the college last year, only 72 remained in the area. "They couldn't find jobs that paid enough, or required the graduate level qualifications they've got," says Clinton.

The seven local authorities covering East Lancashire now plan to collaborate in an effort to raise the sub-region's economic prosperity and combat the rising levels of deprivation highlighted in our analysis. But a multi-area agreement covering the sub-region, which will allow its local authorities to pursue shared goals and pool resources, is unlikely to be signed off until the autumn. Adam Scott, Blackburn with Darwen council's strategic director of regeneration and environment, says that the aim of the deal is to boost economic and physical development, improve skills and tackle worklessness. The seven local authorities are also drawing up plans to set up an economic development company to boost enterprise in the sub-region. Central to these policies is a decision to rebrand East Lancashire as "Pennine Lancashire", says Scott. Alan Cottam, Blackburn with Darwen council's executive member for regeneration, adds: "As a small authority, we didn't get the attention we needed from the regional development agency. By rebranding ourselves as the sub-region of Pennine Lancashire, with a population of 525,000 people, we'll be a bigger player in the regional game."

On the other side of the Pennines, Newcastle has been moving in the opposite direction to Blackburn on the IMD. In 2004, Newcastle was the 20th most disadvantaged local authority in England. In 2007, it was the 37th most disadvantaged. Figures produced by Newcastle City Council show that over this period, Newcastle has made gains across all seven themes measured by the IMD.

"We really think we are going in the right direction," says Paul Rubinstein, Newcastle City Council's director of policy. Rubinstein believes that the city's progress shows that regeneration initiatives can tackle deprivation when economic conditions are favourable. "I think they show that, in a benign macro-economic climate, with local programmes that are well targeted and strong partnership arrangements, you can make a difference," he says. However, despite the city's progress, he stresses that inequalities - such as the 13-year disparity in male life expectancy at birth between Newcastle's best and worst wards - remain "unacceptable".

Rubinstein partly attributes Newcastle's progress to a decision to focus Neighbourhood Renewal Fund cash on three things - health inequalities, worklessness and community safety - and to ensure a holistic approach to tackling them. "(This style of) working in the hardest areas has worked quite well for us," he says, with a focus on social and economic regeneration paying dividends. "You've got to address social and economic issues first," says Rubinstein. He says that this approach is exemplified by Newcastle's New Deal for Communities (NDC) partnership, which operates in the city's West End. "A lot of the work they've done will be invisible to you," he says. "It's about investing in social capital, training programmes and childcare schemes."

Later, I visit the Nunsmoor Centre, a community facility in Arthur's Hill, which was recently rebuilt using funding from the NDC and its partners. Graeme Williams, neighbourhood partnership manager at the NDC, says they took an early decision to focus on tackling social and economic problems. "If you don't work with the people to make them feel more confident and secure and raise their aspirations, you're not going to do the job," he says.

This approach has seen the NDC recruiting community engagement workers from the local area. Bernie Macall, a resident who was recruited to the NDC's community engagement team, says that her self-confidence has improved as a result. "When I first started, I couldn't pick the phone up, I didn't have any confidence," she says. Shamsun Choudhury, another NDC community engagement worker, says that the policy has also raised the aspirations of other residents. "If you see somebody you know doing the job, it builds your confidence," she says. "You think: 'If she can do it, so can I'."

Since 2000, the overall crime rate in the NDC area has fallen by 38 per cent. Jon Keenan, the antisocial behaviour coordinator for the NDC's policing team, says that a focus on partnership working has produced results. "We work very hard to ensure that all local public agencies play their part in helping to reduce crime and disorder," he says. "We used to have 20 organisations at a time taking a (separate) bite at the same issue. There's been a cultural change."

David Slater, Newcastle City Council's executive director of environment and regeneration, says that the North-East has successfully established a brand for itself, "part of which is cultural, part of which is quality of life related". He adds: "I think the region has rediscovered its ambition." Jeremy Sherlock, director of the South East Northumberland-North Tyneside Regeneration Initiative, says that councils surrounding Newcastle have benefited from the city's success. "They've been able to link into a developing, successful conurbation," he says.

Our analysis of the IMD figures suggests that in London, inner city boroughs are becoming less deprived, while outer boroughs are becoming more disadvantaged. Camden and Westminster top our table of the ten deprived local authority areas that have seen the greatest positive change between 2004 and 2007, while Brent, Waltham Forest and Barking & Dagenham feature in the table of the ten deprived council areas that have seen the greatest negative change.

Tony Travers, director of the Greater London Group at the London School of Economics, says that our findings are consistent with recent surveys carried out by pollsters Mori. "Mori opinion tracking work shows that people in inner London are happier than those in outer London," he says. Travers believes the findings may reflect the public policy attention given to inner city areas over the last few decades. "Within London, there's no doubt that the drift of public policy since the Callaghan government (of the late 1970s) has been centred on the inner deprived areas of cities," he says. "For many years, it's been assumed that suburban areas can be left to their own devices."

The London Borough of Brent saw the biggest increase in deprivation between 2004 and 2007, according to our analysis of the IMD. In 2004, Brent was ranked as the 81st most deprived local authority on the IMD. But in 2007, it shot up to 53rd on the index.

Jo Francis, Brent council's acting head of regeneration, policy and projects, says that a high level of population churn in the area is increasing its deprivation levels. More than a third of Brent's population speaks English as a second language, Francis says. She adds that those people who are helped into jobs by local agencies often move out of the borough when their incomes rise. "Immigration is quite a big issue for us," she says. "We think it's driving the deprivation figures."

Meanwhile, neighbouring Westminster is not treating its improved position in the deprivation table - from being the 39th most deprived borough in 2004 to the 72nd in 2007 - as entirely good news. The borough's decrease in deprivation on the IMD means it is ineligible for cash from the new Working Neighbourhoods Fund. And Dianna Neal, head of renewal and culture at umbrella body London Councils, says the use of a different set of population data in the 2007 IMD may have affected Westminster's deprivation ranking (see box, above). In Westminster, this added 16,950 to the population - the biggest increase of any London borough. "It may partly explain why Westminster is coming out as less deprived," Neal says. Nevertheless, Gurjit Jessel, Westminster City Council's area renewal manager, says that a strong local strategic partnership in the borough, coupled with effective resident engagement, has helped tackle deprivation. She says that local area renewal partnerships, bringing together local agencies with residents in deprived areas, have enabled the council and its partners to tailor initiatives to fit small areas. "I think the targeted housing estate approach is different to the approach taken by other local authorities," she says.

Back in Bank Top in Blackburn, Sayyed Osman points out a row of refurbished houses that he says have seen their prices rise from less than £20,000 to £100,000. "We've done everything we can to assist in the physical regeneration," he says. "What we now need is the economic regeneration to address the economic imbalance." But Waqar Hussain argues that more work needs to be done to raise aspiration and boost leadership in Blackburn's communities. "If your dad and his mates got together and cleaned the street, it's an inspiration to you," he says. "But if all your dad does is complain about the fact that the street is never clean, then that's what you're going to do."

INDEX METHODOLOGY

The Index of Multiple Deprivation contains seven "domains" - income, employment, health, education, housing, environment and crime - against which deprivation is measured, allowing each area in England to be ranked relative to one another. Using these domains, small geographical areas containing on average 1,500 people are ranked according to deprivation. England has 32,482 "lower super output areas" and LSOA scores can be used to give overall scores to local authorities and county councils.

For the first time, it is possible to look at changes to areas' ranking on the IMD over time. This is because having altered the way deprivation was measured for the 2000 and 2004 indices, the Department for Communities and Local Government bowed to pressure and agreed that the methodology, domains and indicators used in 2007 would be the same as in 2004*.

Our analysis took the average IMD score of each of the local authorities in the bottom quartile of the index in 2004 and compared it with their average score in 2007. From that comparison, we drew up our tables of the ten authority areas that saw the greatest positive and negative change.

* Despite these elements remaining the same, the population data used is different: the 2004 IMD used population estimates from mid-2001, but these were revised for the 2007 IMD. A briefing produced for the Greater London Authority argues that this may make detailed comparison of IMD results in London problematic.