Quarter of Sefton children living in poverty - borough has one of greatest disparities of wealth in country

Over 14,000 children in Sefton are living in poverty with a further 9,000 in families struggling to make ends meet.

With over 56,000 children living across the Merseyside borough, over 26% are in poverty after housing costs while 16% live in low income families.

In a borough with a population of nearly 300,000 people nearly 55,000 of those live in areas classed among the 10% most deprived in the country, with Sefton also having the highest level of people not in work across the Liverpool City Region.

The situation is not uniform throughout the borough, which has one of the greatest disparities of wealth in the country between the richest and poorest in the area. This contributes to large differences in terms of health and life expectancy depending on where people live in Sefton.

In a bid to tackle some of the entrenched problems with inequality and deprivation in parts of the borough, Sefton Council is planning to adopt a “socioeconomic duty” – a commitment to “adopt transparent and effective measures to address the inequalities that result from differences in occupation, education and place of residence.”

According to a report set to be discussed at a meeting of the borough’s cabinet next week, the aim of the duty is to help public bodies such as Sefton Council to “recognise the link between different forms of poverty and the integrated approach needed to tackle them.”

In practice, this will involve measures such as ensuring socioeconomic inequality is factored into the decision-making process through equality impact assessments and policy.

Other measures will include enhanced data collection, staff training and working alongside residents and partners to gain understanding of the issues people face and develop strategies to tackle poverty in the borough.

Adopting the duty will also show a “visible” commitment by the council’s leadership to improving socioeconomic inequality in Sefton, according to the report.

The socioeconomic duty has already been accepted by other city region authorities, including Halton, Knowsley and Liverpool with the report stating that in bringing Sefton in line with this approach, local authorities can work together on a joint strategy to make an impact across the wider Merseyside area.