A tale of two cities

We live in a city where enclaves of wealth frequently sit cheek by jowl with pockets of some of the most severe deprivation in the country. Ian Mitchell reports

You really know that your area has ‘arrived’ when Gordon Ramsey opens a restaurant in your neighbourhood.

So when the celebrity chef decided to venture east recently to set up a trendy gastro pub in London’s E14 postal district, the local estate agents were no doubt rubbing their hands in glee.

They could probably even afford to eat their lunch there, given that last year studio apartments in E14 sold for an average of £310,000 (and a two bed flat would have set you back very close to half a million pounds).

Such property prices are not surprising when you learn that households in E14 have one of the highest average incomes anywhere in the country.

For those not familiar with the postcode, E14 is on the Isle of Dogs in Tower Hamlets.

A couple of decades ago, the Isle of Dogs was no-one’s idea of a fancy address.

But today, next to the gleaming towers of Canary Wharf, served by the capital’s newest railway line the Docklands Light Railway, and with a host of attractive eateries and shops, you could say that the area is a model of modern affluent London.

And of course you would be half right. But the other half of the story could hardly be more starkly different because as well as some of the country’s wealthiest households the capital also has some of its most deprived.

A more complete picture of London can be seen from analysis of the government’s national measurement of poverty, known as the Indices of Multiple Deprivation (IMD).

The IMD draw together data across a variety of indicators such as income, employment, health deprivation and disability, education, barriers to housing, crime and living environment.

Using this comprehensive measure, the most recent indices - published in December 2007 - reveal that of the eight most deprived authorities in England, four are in London.

And, despite the stellar house prices and wealth of E14, Tower Hamlets is among them.

And what the IMD further reveal about London is that not only does great wealth and great poverty exist within the capital but it frequently exists side by side.

Since 2004 the IMD have collected data at the level of what statisticians refer to as ‘super output areas’.

There are more than 32,000 super output areas within England measuring relative deprivation and prosperity within populations as small as 1,000. Super output areas provide the most comprehensive and detailed picture of the relative wealth or otherwise of every community in England, allowing policy makers to compare data not only within boroughs but within wards.

The picture they reveal in areas such as E14 is one of extremes.

When looked at on a super areas output basis, the Millwall and Blackwall and Cubitt Town wards that make up the Isle of Dogs contain pockets of people who are among the 10 per cent most prosperous in the country and others that are among the 10 per cent most deprived.

And in both wards, these extremes occur in areas immediately adjacent to each other.

The Isle of Dogs may be an acute example but it is far from unique.

This second London is the one where more than half a million children live in income poverty, where the proportion of children living in workless households is the highest of any region in England, where more pensioners live in income poverty than elsewhere and where the number of unemployed people is greater than in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland put together.

The glamorous “first” London may be the one that is better known beyond the boundaries of the M25 but, whatever the image, the hard statistics tell us that even amidst the greatest affluence, poverty is never far away.