# Where hardship stacks up in England

Hardship is not one thing or one place. This British Resilience Index analysis ranks every lower tier local authority in England on three official measures at once: the fuel poverty rate, the share of children in low income after housing costs, and the drug misuse death rate. Combining them shows where the deepest hardship overlaps, and how the places with the highest child poverty on paper are often not the places carrying the heaviest combined load.

Source page: https://britishresilienceindex.com/deep-dive/hardship
Machine readable data: https://britishresilienceindex.com/data/deep-dive/hardship.json

## How to read this

We take three separately sourced official indicators, rank the 296 local authorities on each from least to most affected, and average the ranks into a hardship index from 0 to 100. A higher score means an area sits high on more of the three measures at once. This is a British Resilience Index analysis, not an official statistic; each input is cited and reconciled to its publisher.

## The deepest hardship is in the old industrial North and the coast

On the combined index, Blackpool, a coastal town, carries the heaviest hardship in England, sitting near the top on all three measures at once. Behind it come the big cities of the North and Midlands: Birmingham, Kingston upon Hull, City of, Manchester and Liverpool. These are places where expensive to heat homes, low incomes and drug harm pile up together, rather than appearing one at a time.

- **Top name**: Blackpool
- **Top score**: 98

## The twelve highest combined hardship areas

Each area's score is its average rank across the three measures, from 0 to 100. The table below it shows how each place stands on the underlying figures: the fuel poverty rate, the children in low income rate, and the drug misuse death rate per 100,000.

| name | score | fuel | child | drug |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blackpool | 98 | 13.9 | 39.2 | 21.3 |
| Birmingham | 96 | 13.8 | 44.4 | 10 |
| Kingston upon Hull, City of | 93 | 13.5 | 37.2 | 10.1 |
| Manchester | 93 | 12 | 42.3 | 10.4 |
| Liverpool | 92 | 11.9 | 34.2 | 13.9 |
| Bradford | 92 | 12.2 | 41.8 | 9.3 |
| Doncaster | 91 | 12.1 | 34.7 | 10.5 |
| Wolverhampton | 90 | 13.5 | 37.8 | 8.5 |
| Lincoln | 90 | 12.3 | 32.6 | 10.3 |
| Nottingham | 90 | 12.9 | 40.2 | 7.8 |
| Norwich | 89 | 12.1 | 32.2 | 10.5 |
| Burnley | 89 | 13.3 | 39.9 | 7.6 |

- **Note**: Index range across all 296 areas runs down to the lowest hardship: Wokingham, Hart and Surrey Heath in the prosperous South East.

## Why the child poverty map and the hardship map differ

The single highest child poverty rate in England is in Tower Hamlets at 50.3 per cent after housing costs, an inner London figure driven by some of the highest housing costs in the country. Yet Tower Hamlets ranks only 162th on the combined hardship index, because its fuel poverty and drug death rates are well below the worst. The places that top the combined index instead carry every hardship at once. Fuel poverty and child poverty move together across areas (a correlation of 0.61), but drug deaths follow a more separate geography, so combining the three surfaces a different map from any one measure alone.

**Contrasts**

| name | point | detail |
|---|---|---|
| Blackpool | Highest combined hardship, and highest drug death rate | Fuel poverty 13.9 per cent, children in low income 39.2 per cent, drug misuse deaths 21.3 per 100,000. Every hardship at once. |
| Tower Hamlets | Highest child poverty, but 162th on combined hardship | Children in low income 50.3 per cent, but fuel poverty 7.0 per cent and a low drug death rate. An income story driven by London housing costs. |
| Stoke-on-Trent | Highest fuel poverty rate | Fuel poverty 14.8 per cent, children in low income 37.6 per cent. Older, harder to heat housing stock. |

## For how hardship is targeted

- The deepest combined hardship sits in the old industrial North and the coast, not in the areas with the highest headline child poverty. Does support follow the combined picture or a single measure?
- Fuel poverty and low income track each other, but drug deaths follow a more separate map. Are these treated as one problem or three?
- Inner London tops child poverty largely because of housing costs. How much of that would ease if housing were cheaper rather than incomes higher?
- The same northern and coastal towns appear at the top of measure after measure. What would it take to change the underlying conditions there?

## Sources

- Sub-regional fuel poverty data 2026 (2024 data), DESNZ (https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/sub-regional-fuel-poverty-data-2026-2024-data) · Open Government Licence v3.0
- Children in Low Income Families: local area statistics, FYE 2025 (DWP and HMRC) (https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/children-in-low-income-families-local-area-statistics-2022-to-2025) · Open Government Licence v3.0
- Deaths related to drug poisoning by local authority, England and Wales (ONS) (https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/datasets/drugmisusedeathsbylocalauthority) · Open Government Licence v3.0

## Caveats and data notes

- This is a British Resilience Index composite, not an official statistic. It ranks areas on each of three measures and averages the ranks into an index from 0 to 100. It shows relative position, not an absolute level of hardship.
- The three inputs cover slightly different periods: fuel poverty is 2024, children in low income is the year to March 2025, and drug misuse deaths are a three year average for 2022 to 2024. Each is the latest available at local authority level.
- Drug misuse death rates are not published for 47 of the 296 areas because deaths were too few to give a reliable rate. Those areas are ranked on the two measures that are available for them.
- The drug misuse death rate is age standardised per 100,000 and averaged over three years; the fuel poverty and child poverty figures are shares of households and children. They are combined by rank, not by adding the raw numbers.
- Figures cover England only and the 296 lower tier local authorities. Fuel poverty is defined differently in the other UK nations, so this analysis is not extended to them.
- Sources: DESNZ sub-regional fuel poverty 2024; DWP and HMRC children in low income FYE 2025; ONS drug misuse deaths 2022 to 2024.

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British Resilience Index, a non-partisan UK civic data project. Every figure is
reconciled to its primary official publisher before it is shown. Free to cite with
attribution: https://britishresilienceindex.com