Lack of social infrastructure damaging for poorer areas

A study has found that England’s poorest neighbourhoods have by far the biggest shortages of basic social infrastructure such as parks, playgrounds, pubs, shops and sports facilities.

An audit of public assets in the 10 per cent worst-off council wards, often known as ‘left behind neighbourhoods’, found that they had disproportionately fewer public spaces and buildings, and were less than half as likely to have charities and community groups in their local area.

According to the study, carried out for the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) on left behind neighbourhoods, eight wards had no shops at all in their neighbourhoods or within 1km of the local area, while three had no public parks, gardens or playing fields.

Those communities with the highest need for investment in local community assets and facilities receive the least amount of funding.  Notably, these are places that have previously been shown to have worse health, employment and education outcomes than other equally deprived places that have community level social infrastructure – places and spaces for people to meet, community activities and connectivity, digital and physical – and the rest of England. The researchers say that this further highlights the need for focused, targeted investment at the hyper-local level directly into these communities to develop social infrastructure.

Paul Howell, MP for Sedgefield and Conservative co-chair of the APPG, said: “The government has created a number of new funds aimed at levelling up to support those areas of the country that most need investment, but unfortunately these 225 neighbourhoods are set to lose out once again if they do not receive targeted funds to help build the skills and capacity of the people living there to come together and apply for funding.”