Why has Jaywick been the country's most deprived area since 2011?

The Essex coastal village inherited the label from Speke-Garston in Liverpool, which was the country's most deprived area back in 2007

Jaywick has been identified as the most deprived neighbourhood in England for the fourth time in a row. The UK has had six prime minsters since the seaside village near Clacton in Essex first received the label in 2011.

Despite this, the leader of the local council "wasn't expecting to be top". So, why has Jaywick been the country's most deprived neighbourhood for more than a decade?

Local MP Nigel Farage thinks low income areas can gain momentum, while the leader of the council says the risk of flooding scares investors away.

Low income and unemployment are the two indicators that make up nearly half the ranking in the deprivation index. Poor health and premature death, crime, housing, environment and access to local services are included too.

The Labour government's Minister for Local Government and Homelessness, Alison McGovern, said: "These statistics are a damning indictment of a system that has left some communities broken, councils pushed to a financial cliff edge and residents facing the brunt of service cuts."

She added that the devolution plan for local government would put communities "back in control" of their areas, but also nodded to UK-wide investments, such as £500m into children's development and extending free school meals.

'I wasn't expecting to be top'

"I wasn't expecting to be top," said the council leader

Mark Stephenson, the Independent leader of Tendring District Council, said: "I did expect to be somewhere near the top, but I thought we'd done quite a bit.

"You can see in some of the levels that make up the indices that we have done huge increases, we were second in some areas and now we're 89th, so to come top again is very, very disappointing."

Last year, the council drew up a £126m regeneration plan for Jaywick Sands, but Stephenson said the government had not pledged to support any of it.

"£100m is the sea defences, and I think when you sit there and talk about how do you regenerate an area, if that area is constantly at flood risk, then it's going to be very hard for people to build new homes, supermarkets, businesses, when there's a chance that it could be flooded," he said.

"So I will be writing to government and asking them to look at their flood fund and see how much of that £100m they can provide and then perhaps we can move ourselves off from the top of the index.

"We are working our way through trying to understand that [the result] because we've done some great things around here."

He referenced the £5.3m Sunspot business centre that was built next to the beach in 2023, where 23 of the 24 available units were currently filled.

'We expected it'

Nigel Farage became the leader of Reform UK in the summer of 2024

Meanwhile, Reform UK MP for Clacton, Nigel Farage, said the result was "not a surprise", blaming poor transport links as well as the closure of Clacton's Butlins holiday resort in 1983.

He believes Jaywick's low average income is a problem that can gain momentum.

"Because it's very cheap housing, people who are very down on their luck move into an area, and with that you get high welfare dependency," he said.

"We all understand that welfare is there for those that genuinely need it, but I'm afraid the mental health epidemic is putting an awful lot of young people - whether it's mild anxiety or whatever it is - on to a variety of benefit payments, and once you put somebody aged 22 on benefits, the problem is they tend to stay there."

However he said things were improving in areas like income and unemployment rates.

"It is considerably better than last year and I think the council deserves some credit for the Sunspot initiative," he said.

Farage seconded the council's call to central government for funding, but warned "there are no magic solutions".

What the statistics say

In relation to Farage's claims, nearly 12% of people in Jaywick said they were in bad health, according to the 2021 Census. This was compared with 4% nationally,

Meanwhile, two-thirds of the village's working-age population were economically inactive, which includes people who are unemployed, not actively seeking work, students or people off work due to long-term sickness

That compares with a national average of 39%.

There were also more than twice the number of people with no qualifications compared with the national average.

As a once popular seaside spot, many of the locals bought chalet holiday homes which became permanent places of residence.

The average home in Jaywick is valued at £175,636 on Rightmove, which is 60% of the national average.

'It was packed'

Every Thursday, Colin travels from Maldon to open his stall here

While the local politicians were pleased with the business centre, some others were unhappy and claimed that it had shrunk the size of the car boot sale, reducing footfall.

Former dancer and local Janine Sterling, 65, was browsing the stalls outside the Sunspot business centre. She said the village needed "a lot more" visitors.

"This used to be a huge boot sale site and it was very, very busy, three times a week," she said.

"People used to get here at six o'clock in the morning and they'd still be busy at 10 or 11.

"I preferred it [to] having the Sunspot, because nothing seems to happen here now. It cost five point something million and no-one does any business.

"In the summer months it's not so bad."

Colin, 62, comes from Maldon to sell his wares at the boot sale every Thursday.

"It's not like the old days here when we had a decent boot sale," he said.

"Every Tuesday and Thursday when we had them, it was packed with sellers [and] buyers, and then on the Sunday it was half packed, but nowadays it's nothing."

Janine thinks the village needs better press

BBC Essex's political reporter, Simon Dedman, said: "The deprivation index certainly does not mean everyone in Jaywick is struggling and it should not be used to presume that they are.

"It would not take you long to find people in the community who disagree and dislike their community being ranked this way."