Child poverty in the Marlborough area – the latest figures

There was evidence of some rather non-joined up Wiltshire Council thinking at the Marlborough Area Board on Tuesday (September 29.)

The notice of the consultation on the decision to close Marlborough’s Sure Start children’s centre was on the agenda and raised not a murmur in the Hall.  Then there was a presentation by the Council’s public health department on the Marlborough Area’s child poverty statistics.

On the list of the ways the Council provides early intervention to defeat child poverty through promoting emotional attachment was ‘Health promotion activities through Children’s Centres.’

Two members of Wiltshire Council’s public health team showed the Area Board the latest available statistics from the Department of Work and Pensions.  At present child poverty is defined by the government as those children living in households on out-of-work benefits or tax credits with an income less than 60 per cent of the national median income.

The national media income is £26,500 – and 60 per cent of that is £15,900.  Nationally this leaves 17 per cent of UK children in poverty – that’s 2,300,000 children – and that is one of the highest rates in the industrialised world.
Based on that definition 10.6 per cent of Wiltshire’s children are in poverty.

In addition, to reach an acceptable minimum living standard in rural communities you need to spend 10-20 per cent more of your earnings than if you lived in an urban area.  Factors here include the cuts to public transport services.

Using the government definition, there are 235 children in poverty in the Marlborough Area – that’s 7.8 per cent of children and is a slight improvement on the 2006 figures.   

The Marlborough area figures are significantly higher than the Wiltshire average in terms of 5-10 year olds, 16-19 year-olds and households in fuel poverty.  And they are much worse in terms of the Key Stage 4 free school meal attainment gap – in the Marlborough area that includes 62.7 per cent of children against 31.1 per cent across the county.

But the Marlborough area figures are significantly better than the Wiltshire average for children in poverty aged 0-4, children living in unemployed households, children who are overweight and several other categories.

It is obvious from these figures that treating Marlborough as having a low deprivation ranking (24th out 30) and using that as the rationale for closing Marlborough’s Sure Start centre does not tell the whole story.

Nearly one third of the children deemed under the official test to be in poverty in the Marlborough area are 0-4 year-olds.  And there may be more than that closer to poverty because Wiltshire is a lower income economy – with a gross median annual earnings of only £20,657.
 
Add in the acknowledged higher rural living costs, and there will be a higher number of children who may be only just above the official child poverty threshold.   

It is those children who, it is feared, may be liable to fall through the net if the changes made to Marlborough’s  ‘Sure Start’ provision fail to be inclusive.