Britain is in a ‘spiral of ever-growing division’ with rural and coastal regions being left behind, warns social mobility tsar

Children from deprived backgrounds face the worst prospects in some of the richest parts of the country, according to a damning new study that lays bare deep geographical divisions across Britain.

An annual report by the government’s own social mobility watchdog warns that while London and its suburbs are pulling away, rural, coastal and former industrial areas are being left behind.

Alan Milburn, chair of the Social Mobility Commission, highlighted how the Brexit vote made the geographical divisions clear, but said the monumental task of leaving the EU had left the government with little capacity to tackle the underlying causes.

Launching the report on Tuesday, Milburn said that while he thought Brexit was a mistake its causes were rational. “What this report shows is that the causes of Brexit are real. People are concerned for a reason, they do feel that they are being left behind, they do feel that they are being ignored, they are resentful of the outside, whatever form that takes.”

The State of the Nation report finds that some of the wealthiest areas in England – including west Berkshire, the Cotswolds and Crawley, deliver worse outcomes for their disadvantaged children than places that are much poorer, such as Sunderland and Tower Hamlets.

Writing in the Guardian, Milburn warned of a country “in the grip of a self-reinforcing spiral of ever-growing division”, where children are plunged into a postcode lottery from birth.

“London and its hinterland are increasingly looking like a different country from the rest of Britain. It is moving ahead, as are many of our country’s great cities. But too many rural and coastal areas and the towns of Britain’s old industrial heartlands are being left behind economically, and hollowed out socially,” he added, saying that “tinkering around the edges” would not do.

The report also finds that the north is underfunded by £6bn a year compared with the capital, but says the research also “debunks the assumption that a simple north-south divide exists”.

Social mobility is a stark postcode lottery. Too many in Britain are being left behind Read more

It reveals that the east and west Midlands are the worst performing regions, while a list of local authorities places the coastal council of West Somerset at the bottom while Westminster is at the top.

Other findings include that:



51% of children on free school meals in London achieve A* to C grades in English and maths GCSE compared with a 36% average in all other regions. There is a gulf between the highest figures of 63% in Westminster and the lowest, 27% on the Isle of the Wight.

Meanwhile in Kensington and Chelsea, 50% of disadvantaged youngsters make it to university, compared with just 10% in Hastings, Barnsley and Eastbourne.

Some of the worst-performing areas, such as Weymouth and Portland, and Allerdale, are rural.

In 71, largely rural, areas, more than 30% of people earn below the voluntary living wage. The average wage in West Somerset was just £312 a week, less than half that in the best-performing areas.

In Bolsover just 17% of residents are in jobs that are professional and managerial positions compared with 51% in Oxford.

At the report’s launch, Milburn said he was urging action “not purely out of economic or even social concerns but for political reasons too”.

Of the 65 cold-spot areas identified in the report all but five voted to leave in the European referendum last year. The vast majority of the 65 hotspot areas voted remain.

“It is easy to rail against what is happening but the analysis in this report explains why there is such a sense of political alienation and social resentment in so many parts of our country,” Milburn said. “Whole tracts of our country feel left behind, because they are. Whole communities feel that the benefits of globalisation have passed them by, because they have.”

He said the government was “understandably heavily focused on Brexit and seems to have little headspace to inject the necessary energy and focus to match words with deeds”.

Milburn said it was essential that mainstream politics could offer the answer to the feelings of resentment fuelled by economic, social and geographical division or, he said, “the answer will come, as we are already seeing in parts of Europe, from the extremism of either the hard left or the far right”.

The study says that a critical factor in the best-performing councils is the quality of teachers available, with secondary teachers 70% more likely to leave the profession in deprived areas.

Although richer parts of Britain do tend to outperform more deprived areas overall in the social mobility index designed by researchers, that is not always true. Some of the most affluent areas do worse for the poor children than some of the least well-off.

Coastal areas are a focus of the report, with warnings about schools being isolated. Recommendations include more collaboration between schools and subsidised travel for disadvantaged young people in isolated areas. The commission also calls for the central government to fund a push for schools in rural and coastal areas to work together.



It also says that the government should rebalance the national transport budget to help tackle regional disparities.

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The Liberal Democrat leader, Vince Cable, told the Guardian that for too many people social mobility had become nothing but “an empty buzzword”.



“The government urgently needs to take action to improve the prospects of young people in Britain’s rural areas and former industrial heartlands. That should include £100bn of public investment in housebuilding and transport infrastructure to spread opportunity to every corner of the country,” he said.

“Ministers must reverse welfare cuts and boost school funding to give disadvantaged children the best possible chance in life.” The former business secretary argued that reducing regional inequalities was critical, to tackle the underlying resentment that had driven the Brexit vote.

The shadow education secretary, Angela Rayner, said the findings were stark and pointed to a country that “is becoming more divided”. She blamed a “record of failure” by the Conservatives, who she accused of cutting Sure Start funding in half, plunging nurseries into crisis and leaving 400,000 more children in poverty.

“The government has missed its teacher recruitment targets five years in a row – and for two years running more teachers have left classrooms than joined the profession,” she added. “The government’s offer on social mobility is a scheme to take a few children up to 30 miles a day by taxi to get to the nearest grammar school, while cutting school transport for the many.”

The Department for Education, responding to Rayner, said: “These accusations are incorrect. In fact, evidence shows that the number of qualified teachers entering and rejoining the profession is higher than those who have left – this has been true for the last five years running.

“There are now record numbers of teachers in our schools – 15,500 more than in 2010 and teacher recruitment data for the last five years shows teacher recruitment at 100% for 2012-13.”

The education secretary, Justine Greening, said the findings underlined the importance of focusing efforts on disadvantaged areas, highlighting the government’s opportunity areas programme.

“We are making progress,” she said. “There are now 1.8 million more children in good or outstanding schools than in 2010. Disadvantaged young people are entering universities at record rates, and the attainment gap between them and their peers has narrowed.

“We are also boosting salaries through the introduction of the national living wage, creating more full-time, permanent jobs and investing £9bn in affordable housing. Taken together, this won’t just change individual lives, it will help transform our country into a fairer society.”



The report calls for the DfE’s £72m funding for opportunity areas to be matched by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills in order to link up schooling and workplace opportunities.