Indices of Multiple Deprivation 2025: A Sobering Snapshot of Inequality in England

The release of the Indices of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) 2025 offers a stark reminder of the persistent and widespread inequality across England. It is one of the most comprehensive tools available to understand the scale and nature of deprivation, drawing on a wide range of indicators to paint a detailed picture of life in thousands of communities. Despite years of policy interventions, the data reveals that deprivation remains deeply entrenched in many areas, affecting people's health, education, employment prospects, and overall quality of life. The IMD is not just a technical exercise it is a mirror held up to society, reflecting where support is most urgently needed.

What Does the Data Say?

The IMD ranks 33,755 neighbourhoods (Lower-layer Super Output Areas) across seven domains:

• Income

• Employment

• Education, Skills & Training

• Health & Disability

• Crime

• Barriers to Housing & Services

• Living Environment

These domains are combined to produce an overall deprivation score for each area, allowing for a nuanced understanding of the challenges faced by communities. The IMD is widely used by policymakers, researchers, and local authorities to allocate resources, design interventions, and monitor progress.

Key Findings:

• 65% of Local Authority Districts contain at least one of England’s most deprived neighbourhoods, showing that deprivation is not confined to a few urban centres but is spread across the country.

• 82% of neighbourhoods in the most deprived decile in 2025 were also in the most deprived decile in 2019, highlighting the entrenched nature of deprivation and the difficulty in shifting outcomes without sustained intervention.

• Blackpool has seven neighbourhoods in the top 10 most deprived nationally, reflecting long-standing economic and social challenges.

• Jaywick (Tendring) remains the most deprived neighbourhood in England, continuing a trend seen in previous IMD releases.

• London boroughs such as Tower Hamlets, Hackney, Newham, Islington, and Southwark rank highest for income deprivation affecting children and older people, underscoring the capital’s stark inequalities despite its overall wealth.

The data also reveals regional disparities, with the North East, North West, and parts of the Midlands disproportionately represented among the most deprived areas. Coastal towns and post-industrial communities continue to face significant barriers to prosperity, often linked to poor transport connectivity, limited job opportunities, and underinvestment in public services.

These figures underscore the reality that deprivation is not evenly distributed, nor is it easily shifted. It is concentrated, enduring, and often intergenerational. The IMD 2025 provides a vital evidence base for understanding where support is most needed and how policy can be better targeted to achieve meaningful change.

What Needs to Happen?

1. Targeted Local Investment

Local authorities must lead the charge with place-based strategies that are tailored to the unique needs of their communities. These strategies should be informed by IMD data and co-designed with residents to ensure relevance and impact.

• Prioritise early years development to break cycles of poverty. Investment in high-quality childcare, parenting support, and early education can have lifelong benefits, particularly in areas where children face multiple disadvantages.

• Expand employment support and skills training to help residents access sustainable work. This includes targeted outreach to long-term unemployed individuals, partnerships with local employers, and programmes that address barriers such as transport and digital exclusion.

• Invest in community wellbeing, including mental health services, safe and affordable housing, and public spaces that foster connection and resilience. Tackling anti-social behaviour, improving air quality, and supporting community-led initiatives are also key components.

Local investment must be flexible, long-term, and focused on prevention. Short-term funding cycles and rigid programme criteria often undermine the effectiveness of local interventions.

2. National Policy Reform

While local action is vital, the scale of the challenge demands central government support that is both strategic and sustained.

• The Government’s 2025/26 finance settlement includes a £600m Recovery Grant for the most deprived councils, with funding increases of 6.4% for the most deprived decile compared to 3% for the least deprived. This is a welcome step, but it must be the beginning of a broader shift.

• Core spending power remains 8.3% lower in real terms than in 2010/11, making long-term funding reform essential. Councils need certainty and autonomy to plan effectively and respond to local needs.

• National policies must also address structural inequalities, including housing affordability, regional economic disparities, and access to quality education and healthcare. A joined-up approach across departments is essential to avoid fragmented efforts.

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3. Cross-Sector Collaboration

To tackle multi-domain deprivation, collaboration is key. No single organisation can address the complexity of need alone.

• Councils, NHS bodies, education providers, and voluntary organisations must share data, resources, and expertise. Integrated care systems and place-based partnerships offer a framework for this collaboration, but they must be adequately supported.

• IMD data should be used to prioritise interventions and track progress. Transparent reporting and community accountability can help build trust and ensure that efforts are making a difference.

• Strategies must be inclusive, culturally competent, and community-led. Engaging residents as partners not just recipients of change is critical to success. This includes recognising the strengths within communities and supporting grassroots leadership.

Collaboration should extend beyond service delivery to include co-commissioning, joint funding bids, and shared learning. The most effective responses to deprivation are those that break down silos and build collective capacity for change.

A Call to Action

The IMD 2025 is more than a dataset it’s a call to action. There is plenty to do locally, but without sustained support from central government, the nation-wide issue of deprivation will remain unresolved. Local leaders must be bold, collaborative, and relentless in their pursuit of equity. The time for short-term fixes is over. What’s needed now is long-term, targeted investment that transforms lives and communities. This is a pivotal moment. The IMD 2025 lays bare the scale of inequality and the urgency of response. It is not enough to acknowledge the problem we must act decisively. Every child deserves a fair start, every adult deserves the opportunity to thrive, and every community deserves to be safe, healthy, and hopeful. Let this be the year we move from analysis to action, from data to delivery. Let us build a future where postcode no longer determines prospects, and where deprivation is no longer a persistent feature of our national landscape.