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Communities
Deprived areas are characterised by a multitude of linked problems. Opportunity for all means not only opportunity for all individuals regardless of their personal characteristics, but also regardless of the area in which they live. This chapter sets out a summary of progress on the indicators for communities and then goes on to describe each indicator in detail.
Employment
The overall working age employment rate in Quarter 2 of 2007 stood at 74.3 per cent for Great Britain (indicator 35). Within this there has been a rise in the employment rate for the 25 most deprived local authority areas from 61.6 per cent in 2000 to 65.7 per cent in 2006. The overall employment rate was relatively stable over the period 2000-06, consequently the employment rate gap narrowed during this time from 12.8 to 9.0 percentage points.
There is a break in the data from 2007 due to the move to quarterly Labour Force Survey data and so the figure for 2007 is not directly comparable with earlier data. However, the figure for 2007 is 66.3 per cent, which equates to an employment rate gap of 8.0 per cent.
Housing
In 1996, 44 per cent of households lived in a home that did not meet the set standard of decency (Indicator 37). This has since fallen steadily to 27 per cent in 2005.
Although there are greater numbers of owner-occupiers in non-decent homes, those who rent privately are more likely to be in non-decent homes.[28] The proportion of vulnerable households in non-decent private homes fell from 43 per cent in 2001 to 34 per cent in 2004.[29] Recent research also showed that “there have been substantial improvements over time in the number of dwellings failing to meet successively higher standards since 1971”, but that there are still considerable differences between the most and least deprived areas.[30]
The number of households in fuel poverty has fallen significantly between 1996 and 2004 (Indicator 38). Analysis suggests that, between 1996 and 2003, 61 per cent of the reduction can be attributed to improvement in incomes, 22 per cent to energy price changes and 17 per cent to improved energy efficiency. Indications for 2004 figures are that the positive effect of energy price movements has lessened because of the increases in energy prices. Estimates published in the Energy White Paper 2007[31] suggest the number of households in fuel poverty in England in 2006 had risen by approximately 1.2 million compared with 2004.
In 2002/03, the gap between the quartile of the Crime and Disorder Partnership areas that had the highest level of crime (the 94 partnerships with the highest rate of combined domestic burglary, vehicle crime and robbery in the baseline year) and the remaining three quartiles was 27.1 offences per 1,000 population (Indicator 36). This gap reduced to 17.1 offences per 1,000 population in 2006/07.[32]
There are geographic patterns and concentrations of offences varied by crime type. For example, 45 per cent of recorded robbery offences occurred in London. Crucially, according to the 2006/07 British Crime Survey, people living in more deprived areas were more likely to be a victim of crime than those living in less deprived areas.[33]
Education
Between 1997 and 2006 there has been an overall decrease in the proportion of schools in which fewer than 65 per cent of pupils achieve Level 4 or higher in the Key Stage 2 tests for English and mathematics (Indicator 40). The 2006 figures (based on revised data) show a decrease of one percentage point in English to 13 per cent and a decrease of two percentage points in mathematics to 19 per cent compared with the equivalent 2005 figures.
Health
The latest data, for 2003-05, show that while life expectancy has improved for England as a whole and the Spearhead Group (the fifth of local authorities with the worst health and deprivation indicators), it has improved more slowly in the Spearhead Group (Indicator 39). The gap in life expectancy between England and the Spearhead Group (in absolute and relative terms) is wider than at the baseline for both males and females.[34]
Road accidents
There has been a greater reduction in the proportion of all road accident casualties in disadvantaged districts than in England as a whole (Indicator 41). The number of casualties in road accidents in disadvantaged districts has fallen by 23.1 per cent to 91,056 between the baseline (1999-2001) and 2006, compared with a 19.4 per cent fall to 228,557 casualties in England as a whole.[35],[36]
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