The New Statesman.

I'm Anous Shekelian and this is the New Statesman podcast.

Joining me today is our senior data journalist Ben Walker to discuss what we can glean from the new English indices of deprivation.

Ben, this is a really fascinating index. The last one came out in 2019.

So it's been a while

that we've been waiting for the new one. And they're important, aren't they, because they

inform government policy. For example, the latest pride in place policy from the government,

which chooses where to direct funding to deprive neighbourhoods is based on the 2019 ranking.

Where to begin, really, because over the past six years, a lot has changed.

If you're looking for the most deprived neighbourhood, it stayed the same.

And I've done the analysis by Ward.

So when we think of boundaries, you think MPs represent constituencies, councillors represent

wards.

But this data is done by something

called lower super output area, which means absolutely nothing to most people because it's between

400 houses and 1,000 houses. This data really doesn't tell me much. So I've done it by ward here,

and look, if you're looking for the most deprived part of England and Wales, because we

don't get the Scotland data yet, it still is this ward called Bloomfield in Blackpool,

followed by another part of Blackpool, followed by Great Yama, followed by Middlesbrough,

Redcar, Cleveland, Grimsby, Middlesbrough again, Liverpool again, and so on and so forth.

The top line data hasn't really

changed much over the past six years, but you go into the 20th most deprived place, the 30th most

...