Child poverty is fast becoming the “new normal” in some of the most deprived parts of Britain, say charities, with a combination of high rents and benefit cuts helping to create neighbourhoods in which more than half of children are growing up below the breadline.

The End Child Poverty coalition said without government action there was a risk of entire areas being abandoned to rising poverty. About 500,000 more children were in relative poverty compared with 2010, and poverty levels were growing fastest in already poor areas.

“In many areas growing up in poverty is not the exception, it’s the rule, with more children expected to get swept up in poverty in the coming years, with serious consequences for their life chances,” said Anna Feuchtwang, the chair of the End Child Poverty coalition.

It called on ministers to draw up a credible poverty reduction strategy, including restoring the link between benefits and inflation, ending the four-year benefits freeze and scrapping the two-child limit on child allowances in tax credits and universal credit.

It said less well-off families had been hit by severe real-terms cuts to benefits alongside rising rent and energy costs, while low and stagnating wages meant work alone did not guarantee a route out of poverty – two-thirds of child poverty occurred in families where at least one adult worked.

Welfare shake-up ‘will double number of children in poverty’ Read more

After housing costs were accounted for, Poplar and Limehouse in east London was the parliamentary constituency with the highest child poverty level in Britain in 2017-18, at 58.5%. In 10 constituencies – mostly in London, Birmingham and Greater Manchester – more than 50% of children now live below the poverty line.

Of the six constituencies which recorded year-on-year child poverty increases of over 8% in 2017-18, five had overall child poverty levels of more than 41%, indicating already poor areas were hit worst. The biggest rise in child poverty rates was in Glasgow Kelvin, with an increase last year of 17.5%.

Tower Hamlets council in east London had the highest child poverty rates among British local authorities, at 56.7%. In 27 local authorities, more than four in 10 children are officially poor, including Luton, Pendle in Lancashire, Peterborough, Stoke-on-Trent and Norwich, as well as inner city boroughs in big urban conurbations.

At a neighbourhood level the statistics suggest even more startling concentrations of poverty, with 70% of children in the Bastwell ward in Blackburn living below the breadline. In 233 council wards, more than half of children were in poverty, up from 2016-17 when, using a different methodology, 87 wards had 50% child poverty rates.

The lowest child poverty rates were found predominately in relatively affluent parts of Scotland and the south-east of England, with 63 constituencies recording child poverty rates of under 20%. About 22% of children in Maidenhead – where the prime minister, Theresa May, is the MP – were in relative poverty.

Research published by the coalition showed there were some “preliminary indications” that child poverty was becoming increasingly concentrated in deprived areas. In 2017-18, 16.9% of children in relative poverty lived in the poorest 10% of local authority areas, up from 14.9% the previous year.

The coalition analysis, prepared by Juliet Stone and Donald Hirsch at Loughborough University, said that child poverty in Britain is now higher than in 2010 on all four main indices: relative poverty; absolute poverty; whether measured before housing costs; or after housing costs.

A government spokesman said the study was based on estimates using a new methodology, and should be treated with caution: “Children growing up in working households are five times less likely to be in relative poverty, which is why we are supporting families to improve their lives through work. And statistics show employment is at a joint record high, wages are outstripping inflation and income inequality and absolute poverty are lower than in 2010.”

Margaret Greenwood, the shadow work and pensions secretary, said: “It is time for the government to wake up to the growing poverty crisis in Britain. If we are to succeed as a country we must invest in our children but by 2021, our social security system will have shrunk by £36bn per year, with disastrous consequences for families across the UK.”