Even before the Scottish Child Payment increase is felt, 90 places in England & Wales have worse child poverty than any part of Scotland
Further down we see North Ayrshire 161, Clackmannanshire 162, Dundee City 179.
Professor John Robertson OBA
As almost every ‘Scottish’ media outlet this morning headlines the Joseph Rowntree Foundation report from 6 October 2025 (Why now?), some context you won’t hear:
From End Child Poverty in June 2024, the above table based on 2022/2023 data, and:
Every year the End Child Poverty Coalition, together with the Centre for Research in Social Policy at Loughborough University, publishes data on the number of children living in poverty, in each Westminster Constituency and Local Authority across the UK. This year (June 2024) we have calculated child poverty rates for the old Parliamentary Constiucny, and the Constituencies that will be used in the 2024 General Election.
Note that the Scottish Child Payment, now £26.70 per child per week has only just begun to affect the above figures and ranking. By the end of 2024/2025 it and the end of the 2 child benefit cap will have further reduced child poverty in Scotland and widened the gap with other parts of the UK.
2 thoughts on “Even before the Scottish Child Payment increase is felt, 90 places in England & Wales have worse child poverty than any part of Scotland”
This is a bit tangential to the thrust of the article.
The short section from the data table at the top of the piece caught my eye. In Tower Hamlets in London (which I know fairly well), there has been a reduction in the rate of poverty. At 48% it is still dire but this is counter to the national trend.
I suspect that the reason is one that is common, in the past 50 years, in London – gentrification. Property developers, knowing there is a demand for housing from the younger professional people who go to work in London, buy up properties in areas of London such as Peckham, Lewisham, Tower Hamlets, raise rents and force poorer tenants to leave, demolish the mouldering properties and build new housing (usually buy-to-rent) on the sites. With fewer poorer families and their children and more, younger better paid people with no children, the percentage of people in poverty in the area reduces.
Of course, the poorer people are still somewhere, in other boroughs or outside London, and the poverty data for these places then increases. Indeed, because they have moved from places like Tower Hamlets, which is adjacent to the City of London and Docklands, where they had low paid jobs as cleaners and security staff and could walk to work, they now incur costs for transport to work or have to spend more time walking to work, to the detriment of family life.
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
This is a bit tangential to the thrust of the article.
The short section from the data table at the top of the piece caught my eye. In Tower Hamlets in London (which I know fairly well), there has been a reduction in the rate of poverty. At 48% it is still dire but this is counter to the national trend.
I suspect that the reason is one that is common, in the past 50 years, in London – gentrification. Property developers, knowing there is a demand for housing from the younger professional people who go to work in London, buy up properties in areas of London such as Peckham, Lewisham, Tower Hamlets, raise rents and force poorer tenants to leave, demolish the mouldering properties and build new housing (usually buy-to-rent) on the sites. With fewer poorer families and their children and more, younger better paid people with no children, the percentage of people in poverty in the area reduces.
Of course, the poorer people are still somewhere, in other boroughs or outside London, and the poverty data for these places then increases. Indeed, because they have moved from places like Tower Hamlets, which is adjacent to the City of London and Docklands, where they had low paid jobs as cleaners and security staff and could walk to work, they now incur costs for transport to work or have to spend more time walking to work, to the detriment of family life.
Ain’t capitalism wonderful????
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Ah! Informed and forensic! The beauty of the experienced mind.
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