Household deprivation dimensions

• Out of a total of 525,247 households in the Lancashire-12 area in March 2021, 252,315 (48%) were not classified to any of the four deprivation categories. This was just below the England and Wales rate of 48.3%.
• For the Lancashire-14 area, the percentage was lower at 46.4%.
• Chorley, Fylde, Ribble Valley and South Ribble were the four Lancashire authorities with over 50% of households in the not deprived category.  In contrast, only 38.2% of households in Blackpool were in this category.
• The percentages of households that were deprived in three or four domains were relatively small at the national level (under 4%), but high rates (above 6%) were recorded in Burnley, Hyndburn, Pendle, Blackburn with Darwen and Blackpool.
• Blackpool was ranked third highest for households deprived in 2 dimensions, fifth for households deprived in 3 dimensions and sixth highest for households deprived in four dimensions.
• All of the areas we have looked at have improved, at least slightly, since the 2011 Census.

The dimensions of deprivation used to classify households are indicators based on the four selected household characteristics:

1. Education: a household is classified as deprived in the education dimension if no one has at least level 2 education and no one aged 16 to 18 years is a full-time student.
2. Employment: a household is classified as deprived in the employment dimension if any member, not a full-time student, is either unemployed or disabled.
3. Health: a household is classified as deprived in the health dimension if any member is disabled.
4. Housing: a household is classified as deprived in the housing dimension if the household's accommodation is either overcrowded, in a shared dwelling, or has no central heating.

These classifications are unchanged from the 2011 Census, so it is useful to measure change between the two.

A household is defines as: one person living alone, or a group of people (not necessarily related) living at the same address who share cooking facilities and share a living room or sitting room, or dining area including sheltered accommodation units in an establishment where 50% or more have their own kitchens (irrespective of whether there are other communal facilities), and all people living in caravans on any type of site that is their usual residence; this will include anyone who has no other usual residence elsewhere in the UK. A household must contain at least one person whose place of usual residence is at the address. A group of short-term residents living together is not classified as a household, and neither is a group of people at an address where only visitors are staying.

The Lancashire results

Out of a total of 525,247 households in the Lancashire-12 area in March 2021, 252,315 (48%) were not classified to any of the four deprivation categories. This was just below of the England and Wales rate of 48.3%. For the Lancashire-14 area, the percentage was lower at 46.4% 

Chorley, Fylde, Ribble Valley and South Ribble were the four Lancashire authorities with over 50% of households in the not deprived category.  In contrast, only 38.2% of households in Blackpool were in this category.

The Lancashire-12 area had a similar percentage of households deprived in one domain (33.6%) to the national average of 33.5% as well as two, three and four domains but for Lancashire-14, the percentages for two and three domains were higher than the England and Wales results. 

The percentages of households that were deprived in three or four domains were relatively small at the national level (under 4%), but high rates (above 6%) were recorded in Burnley, Hyndburn, Pendle, Blackburn with Darwen and Blackpool.

Ranking of local authorities in England and Wales

With 58.6% of households not being deprived in any dimension, Ribble Valley was ranked in 10th highest place out of 331 England and Wales local authorities.

At 19.7% Blackpool was ranked third highest for households deprived in two domains.

For households deprived in three domains, Blackpool was ranked 5^th, Blackburn with Darwen 6^th and Burnley 9^th highest.

At 0.5% Blackpool is still ranked in 6^th highest place for households being deprived in four dimensions

Change from 2011 Census of population

There seems to have been a general improvement in deprivation by these specific classifications since the 2011 Census. The third table in our Power BI report shows that for all of the geographical areas we include there has been an increase in rates for the 0 and 1 domain dimensions and a fall in all of the higher domain dimensions. As the classifications have not changed this is a real improvement, although it has not helped the Blackpool authority to improve its rankings, despite having greater changes in rates than elsewhere. In contrast Ribble Valley has not improved a lot, but did not need to, so remains ranked high for no household deprived in any dimension. We have not shown the 2011 figures in this report, but they are still available in the 2011 census article.

The Microsoft Power BI report

Navigation around the three pages of the report are by using the navigation buttons or the left/right/menu controls in the middle of the footer bar. The graph on the first page shows the five dimension types.

On page 2 use the tabs above the tables to toggle between them. Table 1 shows values and percentages for households in each class from district level in Lancashire up to England and Wales. ONS have not published figures for the Lancashire-14 area, which equates to the Lancashire local economic partnership area. Even this is not available on the NOMIS website which we use as a source for some of our reports. Instead we have created a 'user-defined' area in the NOMIS query builder. The local authority rankings only shows the lower tier local authorities.

The values in the 'Change from Census 2011' table are percentage points (the 2021 percentages minus the 2011 percentages). If you click or tap on the column headers of the table the whole table will sort by that field. 

The ward map shows shading of wards by approximate rates for the two dimension, three dimension and four dimension groups combined. Point at a ward to see all classes displayed in a pie chart. Again ONS have not published figures on this topic for wards. We have built up the ward figures from census output areas using an ONS COA to ward best-fit look-up table, so the counts shown may not be entirely accurate, but the percentages may be more reliable.

Interactive report

Source: NOMIS: Census 2021: Household deprivation dimensions and Census 2011 Households by deprivation dimensions