7 March 2011
Small seaside towns are more economically disadvantaged than the average rural area, a report by Sheffield Hallam University has found.
Its research for the Department for Communities and Local Government looked at seaside towns with fewer than 10,000 residents.
These in most cases had substantially high numbers of retired people and of unemployment benefit claimants.
On average, retried people made up 34% of their populations, against 19% for England as a whole and just over 40% of jobs were dependent on the tourist industry.
Of the 37 towns studied, 22 had worse deprivation than the English average.
‘Compared to rural averages, the scale of disadvantage in smaller seaside towns is distinctly more marked,’ the report said.
‘This may be because the relatively peripheral location of smaller seaside towns means they lack the large group of affluent long-distance commuters often found in other rural locations that usually leavens the social-economic statistics.’
It said the Lincolnshire coast, remote from any major population centre, ‘stands out as a location of acute disadvantage’.
The report followed on from aselect committee report in 2007, which called for government action to help coastal towns, and led to local authorities forming the Coastal Communities Group.
This was followed by the now-defunct Sea Change programme, through which the government invested £45m in coastal cultural regeneration. There is now no specific aid programme.
Communities Secretary Eric Pickles said: ‘Small coastal resorts have shown they can build stronger, more diverse economies when given the chance.
‘The new network of local enterprise partnerships will give local communities and local businesses the chance to transform economic growth along our coast.’
Pickles, along with Prime Minister David Cameron, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and Business Secretary Vince Cable, is today hosting the first meeting of local enterprise partnerships. To date, 31 LEPs have been approved.
