The Guardian has noted this morning that:
In a report entitled Troubled Waters, the thinktank Onward shows that communities set within 5km of England's coast are poorer, sicker and more crime-ridden than their inland neighbours – and calls for a £500m regeneration package.
Grim statistics highlighted in the report include the fact that early, preventable deaths are 15% more likely in coastal areas than inland, crime rates are 12% higher and average disposable incomes £2,800 lower.
They elaborate, noting that:
By analysing detailed income data, Onward shows the stark differences that emerge, even over short distances. In Great Yarmouth, on the east coast, the average income is £23,600 a year, but just over 10km inland it jumps to £33,800.
The average worker in Workington, on the Cumbrian coast, earns £25,000; but less than 10km inland at Cockermouth the average is £34,200.
To be honest, I think most people know much of this.
What few can answer is the question as to why people do not move in that case when that would seem to be the obvious solution to this problem.
The reality is that the supposedly rational act of moving is not what people do. They stay instead. The result is the demand for a levelling-up package.
I support the idea of such a package: many such areas do need help. But I also think that addressing the bigger question of why people do not move is just as important.
Is it because they do not have the capital required to move? That must be part of it. A new rent deposit is beyond the means of many, I suspect, having spent a long time looking at wealth data.
Or is it that the importance of family, place and connections is so strong that moving is simply not on people's agenda? There remain, despite low incomes and higher risk, good reasons for staying that trump the economics of moving. If so, it shows how out-of-touch supposedly rational economics is with the reality of many people's lives. That is a massively important lesson to learn.
In that case, there are also lessons to learn about 'levelling up', because what this implies is that incomes should not be the sole criteria for success: the creation of stronger communities should be.
I do not know the answers here. What I know is that the data shows we do not in too many cases ask the right questions, let alone get near the right answers.
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Having been in just that situation in the past it is definitely both the reasons you detailed along with the sheer cost of selling or relocating all of the household effects one has gleaned in establishing a family household or single one for that matter. Then there is the matter of giving up one employment for uncertainty of another or social support and then trying to rent as an unemployed person in the new locale with all the loss of family and friend and social support. Then you get berks in power plonking trite like give up all your resources at a loss and any local support support to take a casual job or any low paid job elsewhere that may or may not be available with all the pain stress and exploitation imaginable in that. It’s real it’s painful it’s devastating and it’s the knowing cruelty of domination greed and avarice that propels it
I live a mile away from the sea on the east coast.
I have lived in my council house since 1976. I brought my family up here My youngest daughter lives 2 streets away and I have good neighbours and we support each other. I reach state pension age next month and I worry that the council will put more pressure on me to downsize. Staying in my home is vital to my mental wellbeing as is being close to my allotment. Yes I would probably be better off financially if I downsized but all the reasons why want to live where I do completely outweigh any financial benefits.
Thanks
I hope you can stay
I hope you can stay as well.
I think that when council houses are deemed to have been paid for the rent should be reduced to a service charge and the asset should be heritable by the children of the tenants, with the proviso that it return to the social housing pool at death if they cannot use it. On no account should socially owned housing be sold.
In addition
– tenants should be 50% of any management boards
– there should be inter-organisation swap schemes to help mobility of labour (but see below)
– you should be able to decorate, extend and/or modify subject only to quality of work and neighbour impact
People do indeed value family and place ties, we do social mobility wrong – social mobility should mean having the skills and confidence to mix with any other member of society on the basis of common, equal citizenship. Think about that…it has radical implications.
Social mobility should not mean going to university and leaving family and friends behind – thats what it meant for us (when only 5% went) and encouraging everyone to go missed the point big time – now far too much education is vocational training. We have commoditised education and in so doing lost sight of the simple joy of education for its own sake. It could never work. I haven’t heard of relocation packages for some time now, funny that.
And the biggest irony; if you get “on your bike” to seek work – what we might call another “Tebbit test” you are a hero; unless in so doing you cross an international boundary in which case you are to be reviled and othered.
I got on my bike(train) from Liverpool to East Suffolk in 1976 for work. Sent money home out of my wages,which I don’t think happens much now but then it was quite normal. When I arrived here I thought I had entered the twilight zone . Sleepy seaside town with lots of fishing boats and a brewery which was the main employer. A large percentage of houses are now second homes. I did not think about buying my council house as I strongly believed and still do in social housing. It is very annoying when you find out that the council sometimes sells their own stock instead of using it to home locals , especially when they are not building anymore social housing. My kids were a bit miffed that I didn’t buy my house when I had the chance but they both own their own homes so hey ho. Even with a 70% reduction for being here so many years the prices have rocketed so not much chance of that. Most people here have come back after university and many never left but went into the local building firms of which there are several and they are all thriving. No fishing industry to speak of though which is sad because it was full of characters.
I now know exactly where you are
I have been visiting since a child….growing up in Ipswich
In most disciplines, especially ones that claim to be scientific it is relatively easy to figure out what is the objective; but when you raise the spectre of “supposedly rational economics”, Richard I confess it beats me what economists think the object of their abstract theorising might be: we may, however all too easily conclude from what they actually do – that it is nothing useful in this life.
Let’s not forget that people do move as well. My rural area has had a huge influx of southern wealth in recent years as comparatively richer Southerners cash in their chips. We’ve had an explosion of executive homes/country piles in the area, complete with drives and gates and other nouveau riche paraphernalia. Some of us have been getting very rich.
I have to travel 23 miles to a large town from my rural abode there and back to get a pay rise in an area full of agricultural workers and manual labour. A lot of people are on the A6 in the morning or on the train I take doing the same thing.
We have created mobility to serve the market – nothing else – ambling along our motorways reveals nothing but a distribution centre and system for goods, and to move manpower around not for people or communities, yet the Right continues to berate us for not looking after each other when them complain about everything from the NHS to social services.
None of what they advocate adds up – it never did and it never will. We need an empowered regional format of representation that creates policies to sustain communities – not the over centralised system we have now, that is the key.
And not to ignore that the coast has a seemingly magical attraction to us humans – it’s where all those who don’t live there like to go on holiday! Many who live in coastal areas like being there for exactly that reason, making it even more of a wrench to consider moving away.
I’m not very sure about this. I’ve skimmed through the report, particularly as I am reasearching inequality at the moment, and I’m not connvinced it takes into account commuting and, in particular these days, teleworking. Or, for that matter quality of life.
I live in the Bournemouth, Poole, Christchurch connurbation, to which I deliberately moved from Oxford in the eighties because I love the area. For a while I was the accountant for, and a director of, a firm in London to which I commuted once a week and the rest of the time worked remotely, Waterloo being a 2 hr journey. (Plus regular trips to Italy on business, which was served from Bournemouth International Airport). In 2000 I sold my interest in the company and semi-retired, starting up a part time accountancy practice., mainly doing bookkeeping. My income was hugely reduced, but my quality of life was wonderful.
Judging by how crowded the morning Southwestern Railways service is there must be plenty doing that.
All accepted
I had that concern about teleworking
And also age profiles
Villages changing from places where most of the inhabitants were the rural working class to places that are country suburbs or holiday homes for the middle and upper classes has been going on since at least 1945.
Similar things have happened in Cities and Towns, to the extent that the anecdotal evidence suggests that it is now rare in many places to find families that have been living in the same or adjacent neighbourhoods for 3 or 4 generations.
Whether this good for individuals, families or the nation I have no idea.
Is this yet another important area of building successful individual lives and successful communities that has failed to excite much academic or political interest?
Richard, I regularly read your comments and follow your views although moving is far more than the economics of a higher pay/improvement in income. We are human beings and part of life is social and community interaction. It is probably easier when young given there is a tendency to accept and explore given university/college probably requires a move. First, there is the expense and the risk that if it does not work out, then it’s not possible just to reverse what you have done and move back! Then, there are family and friends. The older we get, the more disinclined to make the effort to develop new friendships and retain what we have. Schooling and other social services- we all recognise that these are provided nationally but is what you have better than what you will get by moving – there’s more truth to the “post code lottery” than is public. Public transport is not uniform. Government state at times they encourage mobility but do they? – no tax breaks or grants for the lower paid and whilst it is less of a hurdle for renters, the cost of a move when you are a house owner is a high barrier. Standardisation at HM Land Registry with registration helps from the old unregistered land title but you still have to use a solicitor on both the sale and purchase plus an estate agent! The “system” is not as easy or as clear cut as a decision that I can earn £xx more by moving 10 miles down the road unfortunately. That’s the reality of 21C Britain!
Thanks
You have not mentioned stamp duty. My son has just moved flats and the stamp duty was around £10,000. Another stupid tax.
The bigger picture on the specific issue of mobility is the assumption that pre-dates Neoliberalim: from the enclosures, through the industrial revolution, to de-industrialisation, neo liberalism, post-modern financialisation, and finally the digital age: unified by a single theme best described by Norman Tebbitt; ‘on yer bike’. In other words, the purpose of life is work, but work for someone else for their profit, and wherever is their convenience. Nothing else matters. And there you have modern Britain – coarse, incompetent, selfish, boorish, still mysoginistic and totally corrupt, corruptible, or corrupted – or as the sole alternative to all that, left out; alienated and ignored.
You hit a nail on the head
Yes, but it seems the hammer hit me on the head, before the nail. Another hasty fluffed finger blooper with ‘misogynistic’.
I agree about Tebbit, it is cultural not specifically neoliberal, but intersects with it.
See my reply to Patricia Bleasedale above.
Richard
It is obvious that rational economics or whatever other label you wish to use is not only out touch, it is hugely out of its depth, disconnected with reality and very very destructive and dangerous.
My BSc Hons Economic (Class of 1999) is simply redundant and I would argue totally and utterly useless. I am somewhat baffled and very confused as to how economic theory was (and still is) taught with so little regard to elementary and undeniable hardcore principles about human behaviour and real life.
Keynes is quoted as saying “Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back”
Economists like You, Danny Blanchflower, Steve Keen, Stephanie Kelton, Mariana Mazzucato, Dr Ha Joon Chang and many others have much to offer and teach us all.
To tackle the issues we are currently facing and will face in the future we need to analyse and think about people and their circumstances, environment, society. Policy needs to focus on the root causes of inequality, crime, poverty, deprivation etc etc and not follow out-dated dogma.
I am just highlighting a few ideas below and would be interested in learning your thoughts: (admittedly these are all undeveloped and I am just shooting from the hip so am prepared (expecting to be shot down)
1. Incentivise private landlords/housing associations/companies etc to carry out repairs, renovate, refurbish dilapidated houses/flats by giving tax deductions for expenditure which qualifies and meets certain conditions i.e. green and environment friendly, in deprived areas etc. The aim is to improve standards and quality of housing for those people that are usually neglected but are in desperate need. Better housing brings benefits to health (physical/mental), over all well being and addresses some of the issues highlighted by the broken window theory. I think there is also quote a bit of research that shows improving housing in general derives huge benefit i.e. creates employment/growth, directly reduces medical problems and therefore public health costs, improves neighborhoods etc
2. Extend tax relief/breaks and provide benefits/allowances for family members that care and look after the elderly, vulnerable, disabled, sick, etc. Govt funded schemes could be rolled out through employers and self employed by reducing tax rate on incomes for those individuals that choose to look after other family members (that are in need of care) on a part-time basis and provide them grants and/or tax relief for expenditure incurred in adapting homes/flats, travel, related duties etc. This could result in alleviating current crisis in care sector.
I live in a small resort on the east coast next to a former major fishing port (my username will be the giveaway to where I live!) and both towns have noticeably declined throughout the course of my adult life. We have heard a lot about levelling up but nothing serious ever comes of it.
The area has certainly always been poor in general, but it is only in the past decade or so that the decline has started to turn things distinctly shabby. There was once a lively and vibrant nightlife at weekends (though I’m a bit too old for that sort of thing now), but this seems to have pretty much disappeared since the Global Financial Crisis – many pubs and restaurants shutting or the endless cycle of reopening then closing down again under new ownership. The only industry which appears to be thriving is tattoo parlours! Yes, I’m aware there may be a link between money-laundering and some of these establishments.
Would I consider moving? No, not really. All my close family live within 5 minutes walk of my house, my Mum is in a nearby nursing home, by business is here.
Living here in my 20s wasn’t particularly exciting, but we had a good time out most weekends and had friends to visit in the major cities and the affordable pricing meant it was a good place to live. What will I recommend for my son in a decade when he’s ready to either go to University or start a career? In no uncertain terms, I’ll tell him to get on his bike, because there’s not much for the young here now and I presume the decline will only continue.
Some proper ‘levelling up’ might change things, but I can’t really see anything improving given the bleak political landscape we’re facing at present. A bit of courage from Labour and things might be different but I can’t see anything improving with the current bunch heading the party and the LibDems a busted flush as well.
How depressing.
Depressing, politically, I agree.
Richard, getting children from one school into another is more difficult than most realise. Gone are the days when you could turn up at the start of term with your kids. I’ve heard of parents finding the house, job but can’t get the kids into the nearby school. I’ve heard something similar re nurseries being over subscribed. These sort of issues will limit mobility.
Accepted
Trying to work out where the coastal towns are in the East Midlands, and then 10 km in from there.
Skegness and Mablethorpe only have small farming areas to move to within 10km.
People would have to travel back for work, or travel even further inland to get work.
One thing I don’t understand about the North East is why so many in Northumberland travel south of the Tyne to work, and those living in Durham or Sunderland travel north. Every day they are stuck in traffic jams either through the tunnel or on the A1.
I guess the article does not include Newcastle, because everyone who lives on the coast at Tynemouth could work in Newcastle but wouldn’t want to move there to live.
People who live in Newbiggin by the Sea could probably work in Morpeth but couldn’t necessarily afford to live there, or want to.
In fact what strikes me are the poor wages in all three places in the north east, and that all northern groups earn less than £30,000 average. Why doesn’t that surprise me?
Thinking about why people do or dont move, poverty can drive people to coastal towns. Migration to seaside resorts is linked to the availability of relatively “inexpensive” rentaĺ property, former guest houses now divided into flats. Some people on low incomes move to seaside towns because of the availability of accommodation and low paid seasonal work and cannot then leave. Examples include Blackpool, Bridlington, and Scarborough and in the past, Hastings, places which suffered most from the decline in UK domestic tourism.
As someone who has moved several times as an adult, the last but one time to relocate to Sweden, I honestly think most people feel their roots too strongly to move just to chase a possible economic benefit. My family has the moving gene, my sisters and our partners have moved for economic reasons but it has meant expensive travel to keep in touch with our parents, who also in their late sixties uprooted from the centre of the country to the coast ironically, to be near one of us.
What amazed me every time we have moved is how many stay in the same village, sometimes as many as four generations still in five minutes travel of each other. Not for me!