While local politicians gloat about the success of Salford's regeneration, a new interactive child poverty map of the city produced by Greater Manchester Poverty Action tells a completely different story...
Five wards at the centre of Salford's housing regeneration programme over the last decade currently contain the highest levels of child poverty after housing costs.
Ordsall, which is still being 'regenerated' with much unaffordable housing, has almost 60% (59.3%) child poverty after housing costs (47% before housing costs), followed by Broughton with 55.1% (48.5% before housing costs), Kersal with 54.4% (35.9% before housing costs), Irwell Riverside with 54.2% (47.5% before housing costs) and Langworthy with 51.8% (44.9% before housing costs).
The link is the hike in house prices and rentals since the Pathfinder project in the first decade of the century put private property developers in the driving seat. One developer, Countryside Properties, which has created 'New Broughton', stated in a report to Salford City Council's planning panel in October 2014, how, at the end of its current phases of building, the 'tenure split' would be 36% affordable and 64% non-affordable, or private 'market accommodation'. Previously it was almost 100% affordable housing.
Countryside stated that "It was a key aspiration of the Development Agreement to significantly reduce the proportion of affordable housing and this scheme will help achieve that aspiration..."
Obviously the causes of child poverty aren't just high rents and house prices, with benefit reductions, wage cuts, low wages, unemployment and more adding to the horrendous mix – but other areas of the city, untouched by massive demolition programmes of affordable housing, do not seem to have suffered as badly as these five wards.
Greater Manchester Poverty Action states that the high proportion of children living in poverty after housing costs "suggests that housing costs contribute to child poverty levels".
Overall in Salford, 30% of children are living in poverty before housing costs, and 38.2% are living in poverty after housing costs.
The percentage of children living in households with an income 60% below the median (the main measure of poverty used in the UK) before housing costs in Salford is 24%, and after housing costs is 34.8%, a rise of 2.3% between 2015 and 2019.
To see the child poverty map of Salford and Greater Manchester – click here and then click on the ward
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