By Alistair Grant
GREENOCK town centre has been named Scotland’s most deprived area in official statistics, with council leaders calling it “a bitter pill to swallow”.
The latest Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD) data said it has overtaken Ferguslie Park in Paisley.
Inverclyde, the council area that includes Greenock, was also found to have the largest local share of deprived areas, at 45 per cent.
This was narrowly ahead of Glasgow City Council, which has seen the largest fall in areas of deprivation since the last SIMD figures were published.
Almost half (48%) of its data zones were classed as being in the bottom fifth in 2016, compared to 44% now.
Stockbridge in Edinburgh was found to be the least deprived area, a title that had been held by Giffnock, East Renfrewshire, in the 2016 statistics.
It came as new figures suggested the poorest 10% of Scots are four times more likely to die young than those in the richest 10%.
The Scottish Government’s Long-term Monitoring of Health Inequalities report pointed to “significant health inequalities”.
Inverclyde Council’s deputy leader Jim Clocherty said the findings showed more investment was needed in communities.
He said: “These figures are a bitter pill to swallow and show that investment can’t come soon enough. No part of Scotland wants to be labelled as the ‘most deprived’.”
The SIMD research splits Scotland into almost 7,000 geographic areas, with researchers looking at multiple indicators such as crime, unemployment, pupil attainment rates and how long people have to travel to get to a GP in each of these.
Local authorities with relatively high levels of deprivation include North Ayrshire and West Dunbartonshire at 40% and Dundee City at 38%.
Meanwhile, the Western Isles, Orkney and Shetland all have no areas that are ranked as being in the 20% most deprived.
However, more than half of people on low incomes do not live in the 20% most deprived areas in Scotland.
Communities Secretary Aileen Campbell said: “The Scottish Government is supporting our most disadvantaged and poorest communities through a variety of ways.”
She said more than £1.4 billion had been invested in helping low-income households in 2018-19, with ministers also set to bring in the new £10 a week Scottish Child Payment for poorer families from the end of 2020.
Ms Campbell said: “We are tackling the underlying causes of poverty, including driving fairer wages and improving our physical and social environments.
“Over this parliamentary term we are investing over £3.3 billion to deliver 50,000 more affordable homes, including 35,000 for social rent.
“We are protecting the most vulnerable by providing free school meals, prescriptions, concessionary travel and free personal care and nearly doubling free childcare hours.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel