The Rising ‘Posh-Poor Divide’: The Way Affluence and Hardship Are Found Side by Side in Across England.
In Nunsthorpe, residents occupy homes just a few metres from their wealthier counterparts in nearby Scartho. A six-foot-tall wall literally separates the two communities in the town of Grimsby, blocking off paths and streets that once connected them.
“This is the divide between rich and poor,” said Serenity Colley, 37. “It’s been like this since I’ve known. I don’t think they’ll take it down because I don’t think they’ll want to mix with us.”
An Increasingly Common National Picture
Analysis of government figures reveals how deep inequality can run, at times across nothing more than a few metres of asphalt, a hedge row or a wall. Decades of budget cuts and underinvestment have led to a situation where a majority of councils now contain a locality ranking as one of the poorest in the nation.
The geographical widening of deprivation has coincided with a sharp rise in the number of locations where deprived and well-off residents end up as immediate neighbours. In 2019, just 65 of the poorest neighbourhoods bordered one of the least deprived. This number increased to 119 in the most recent data.
A Wall That Divides More Than Space
In Grimsby, the divide is the biggest in the country and starkly obvious. The wall is much more than a symbolic division; it creates very real difficulties for daily routines.
- School runs that ought to take a quarter of an hour turn into an hour-long journey.
- Access to important services like grocery stores, educational facilities and care homes is made more difficult.
- The site can attract vandalism and loitering, with instances of rubbish being dumped over the wall and other issues.
“People strive to maintain a well-kept home and garden, and then you live opposite that,” noted one local, gesturing towards the rusted metal wall.
Local Bonds Amidst Hardship
Within Centre4, workers stress that need does not recognise postcodes. “Your postcode is not a reliable indicator of your level of challenge,” explained director a community leader.
Regardless of being placed in the most deprived 10% for income, employment, education, health and crime, Nunsthorpe retains a fierce loyalty and feeling of community among its inhabitants. By contrast, Scartho ranks among the least deprived 10% nationally.
A Similar Story: An Estate in Kent
This phenomenon is mirrored nationally. The Stanhope estate in Ashford, Kent, a mid-century housing development, is in the most disadvantaged tenth of neighbourhoods in the country. It is immediately adjacent by large houses built in the 2000s that sit in the wealthiest tenth for job prospects and quality of surroundings.
“They might have larger properties, but here there’s more community,” commented Phil Hockley, aged 63. “You’ll probably find many people over there never even talk to each other.”
The economic divide is clear: an typical three-bedroom house costs about £275,000 on the estate, while across the divide equivalent properties go for about £410,000.
Residents speak of a tangible feeling of being overlooked. “This part of the community gets ignored,” stated holistic health worker Susan. “In this area our amenities have gradually disappeared, and the majority of the community problems here are to do with poverty.”
The rise in these ‘inequality borders’ presents a picture of an increasingly divided England, where prosperity and deprivation are often awkwardly in close proximity.
