The Rising ‘Wealth-Poverty Gap’: How Affluence and Hardship Now Sit Side by Side in Across England.

Within a postwar estate known as ‘The Nunny’, residents live in homes just several yards from their more affluent counterparts in the adjacent Scartho. A 1.8-metre-high barricade physically divides the two communities in the town of Grimsby, sealing off paths and streets that once linked them.

“This is the posh-poor divide,” remarked a resident, 37. “It’s been like this for as long as I’ve known. I doubt they’ll bring it down because I suspect they’ll want to associate with us.”

An Increasingly Common National Picture

Analysis of government figures shows the extent of inequality often exists, at times across little more than a few metres of asphalt, a line of hedges or a wall. Decades of austerity and underinvestment mean a majority of local authorities now have a locality ranking as one of the most deprived in the nation.

This spread of deprivation has coincided with a significant increase in the number of places where deprived and well-off residents find themselves living side by side. In 2019, just 65 of the poorest areas bordered one of the wealthiest. That figure increased to 119 in the latest data.

A Barrier Which Divides More Than Land

At this Lincolnshire site, the gap is the most pronounced in the UK and starkly obvious. The wall is much more than a metaphorical division; it causes very real problems for daily routines.

• School runs that should take a quarter of an hour become an sixty-minute journey.
• Reaching important amenities like supermarkets, educational facilities and employment centres is made more difficult.
• The site often sees vandalism and loitering, with instances of litter being dumped over the wall and other problems.

“People strive to maintain a well-kept home and garden, and then you reside facing that,” noted one local, motioning at the corroded metal wall.

Community Spirit Against a Backdrop of Hardship

Within Centre4, workers stress that support transcends addresses. “Your postcode doesn’t necessarily indicate your level of challenge,” explained chief executive a community leader.

Despite being placed in the most deprived 10% for income, employment, education, health and crime, Nunsthorpe retains a fierce loyalty and feeling of togetherness among its inhabitants. Meanwhile, Scartho is classified among the least deprived 10% nationally.

A Similar Story: Stanhope in Ashford

This phenomenon is mirrored nationally. The Stanhope estate in Kent, a 1960s overspill estate, is in the most disadvantaged tenth of areas in the country. It is immediately adjacent by spacious houses built in the 2000s that are in the wealthiest tenth for employment and living environment.

“They might have bigger houses, but here there’s more community,” said a long-term resident, aged 63. “It’s likely a lot of people over there don’t even speak to each other.”

The economic gap is evident: an average family home sells for about £275,000 on the estate, while across the divide equivalent homes fetch about £410,000.

Residents describe a tangible feeling of being overlooked. “This part of the community gets ignored,” said resident Susan Riley-Nevers. “In this area our amenities have slowly been taken away, and most of the issues we face here are to do with poverty.”

The increase in these ‘deprivation divides’ presents a picture of an increasingly segregated society, where prosperity and deprivation are often awkwardly in close proximity.