Welcome to Misery-by-sea: Dilapidated homes, boarded-up shops and rubbish-strewn streets. Why Jaywick Sands is OFFICIALLY the most deprived village in England


Once billed as an idyllic seaside holiday village, it’s now blighted by dilapidated homes, boarded-up shops and discarded mattresses.

This is East Jaywick in Essex - England's most deprived place, according to the Government’s Indices of Multiple Deprivation. It is mainly home to temporary chalets built by businessman Frank Stedman, who bought marshes there in 1928 hoping to create a holiday village.



Jaywick, the down-at-heel suburb of nearby Clacton, was ranked as the most deprived of all 32,482 small wards in England and Wales. It also has the greatest number of young people not in employment, education or training, with one third claiming Jobseeker's Allowance.

Changes to the benefits and tax system which came in on Monday included a cut in housing benefit payments for working-age social housing tenants whose property is deemed larger than they need, and council tax support payments now being administered locally.

The photographs - by Oli Scarff of Getty Images - were taken as Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith yesterday insisted he would take ‘no bloody lessons’ from those people calling for him to live on £53 a week, saying he had been on the breadline twice.

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Run down: The eastern part of Jaywick, around Brooklands, was declared the country's 'most deprived' neighbourhood, and it's easy to see why from these photographs

Wish you were here? Dilapidated properties stand in the seaside town of East Jaywick, Essex, which is officially the most deprived place in England