Mayor shares thoughts on deprivation statistics for Middlesbrough

Labour’s Chris Cooke, who has been the elected mayor in the town since May 2023, highlighted areas of improvement compared to the last set of measurements, which were taken in 2019.

So far, there has been one headline grabbing figure, which is that half of Middlesbrough’s neighbourhoods are classed as ‘highly deprived’, meaning that these areas are amongst the 10% worst-affected in the country. This measurement sees Middlesbrough as the hardest hit local authority in the land.

Micro areas within Newport ward are particularly negatively affected, but that didn’t stop some people from speaking positively about the area.

In an interview with the Local Democracy Reporting Service, Mayor Cooke was asked to expand on his initial reaction to the figures when they were released, at which point he had pointed to “areas of improvement” while recognising the challenges. With the overwhelmingly negative picture painted by the statistics, he was asked where he saw the improvement as being.

He spoke about the specific measure of income deprivation, where Middlesbrough has gone from worst affected in 2019 to eighth worst affected in 2025 – this improvement has translated into both children and older people indexes. Meanwhile in education and health there have been minor improvements in Middlesbrough’s position relative to other local authorities.

There are seven domains of deprivation and these combine to create the index of multiple deprivation for 2025. The seven categories are:

• income,
• employment,
• education,
• health,
• crime,
• barriers to housing and services,
• living environment.

The seven different categories are not weighted evenly in the wider measurement, with employment worth 22.5% of the overall amount, while a category such as crime constitutes 9.3%.

Mayor Cooke pointed out that three of the Tees Valley local authorities are in the top 10 of the employment domain of deprivation, meaning that these councils are some of the worst affected by this metric. He said: “I think we need to take a real hard look about how we can localise more jobs because that’s clearly not happening.” Middlesbrough remained as the third hardest hit local authority when it comes to employment deprivation – a position it held not only in 2019, but also 2015.

He went on to say: “Our big disappointment really was crime, if I’m honest. I think that is the worrying one. But I think if everyone reflects on this quite strongly, that’s probably quite a realistic picture and I think that will be what residents reflect as well. That’s a much harder one for us as a local authority to tackle directly. But hopefully in the upcoming budget – and I’ve got meetings with police today – we’re going to try and do something to start to make an impact.”

On crime deprivation level, Middlesbrough went from being the 15th worst local authority in 2019 to 2nd worst in 2025. Mayor Cooke said: “Projects like Clear, Hold, Build in East Middlesbrough has seen a dramatic drop in crime, but it’s never going to be enough until we start wiping out the scourge of organised crime gangs, which is what I’m committed to.”

Clear, Hold, Build is the strategy behind Project Orme in three wards in TS3 – Berwick Hills & Pallister, Park End & Beckfield, and Brambles & Thorntree. It sees organised criminals and associates cleared from an area, backed up by high visibility patrols and community support, according to the council.

When asked if such gangs were still plaguing the town in his opinion, the mayor said: “They’ve existed for almost as long as the town’s existed itself and there’s areas of linkage, so Newport and Hemlington are weirdly, intrinsically linked.” He spoke about the need for another Clear, Hold, Build area in the town and how he was working this out.

Further explaining Project Orme, he added: “So in East Middlesbrough, [police] are just picking out families, and dealing with them. Families that have been, for generations, some of them, just been allowed to run riot.” He said that all of this comes under the shadow of Cleveland Police “needing” fair funding and some commitment from the central government.

Middlesbrough District Commander Superintendent Marc Anderson of Cleveland Police said: “We remain committed to working with partners as part of Project Orme to tackle organised crime and make Middlesbrough a safer place to be. As of October, there has been a crime reduction in the targeted areas of almost 12% in the last 12 months compared to the year previous.

“Crime for Middlesbrough as a whole is also down 7.2% for the same time period which shows we’re focusing our resources in the right areas. Through this ongoing work, we have made arrests, secured charges and achieved prison sentences for various offences including dangerous driving and drug dealing.

“Whilst we’re always proactive in our approach, information from the public is vital to ensure we can keep disrupting criminals and bring offenders to justice. You can report issues affecting your community on 101 or report online via our website.”

It should be noted that all the measurements are entirely relative and not absolute measures – in other words, the statistics used show a comparison with other lower-layer super output areas (LSOAs) and other council areas. They do not show in any way whether living standards have objectively improved in the country or whether there has been an overall increase or decrease in deprivation nationally.

As a result, even if everyone in the country was infinitely better off than they are today, the figures would still show the worst 10% off to be classed ‘highly deprived’.

Some measurements of poverty and deprivation measure the real or absolute levels, as opposed to simply being comparative. Mayor Cooke was asked about different measures and said: “This [index of multiple deprivation] feels like a stronger focus and it feels like a much harder challenge to win which is why we should measure ourselves against this… even if we end up not making it to the least deprived place in the country which is not a realistic target, but we need to not be where we are currently.”

There are a grand total of 33,755 LSOAs, each with an approximate population of 1,500. It should be noted that the number of local authority districts has decreased from 317 in 2019 to 296 in 2025.

Mayor Cooke was asked about the Middlesbrough LSOA that has featured as one of the three in the top 100 most deprived neighbourhoods in every index of multiple deprivation since 2004. The neighbourhood is part of the Newport ward and stretches from the A66 down to Newport Primary School. He said: “That is almost entirely social housing and it’s social housing within one of the deprived wards so it means actually, the likelihood is that the reason that people are eligible for that housing is the same reason that would land them unfortunately in that category.”

He pointed out how the mixed estates “hide” such problems. In Newport, for example, the mayor “sometimes” expects the health statistics to be “worse” than they come across as. He said: “But, there’s a cultural difference there, so stuff like breast feeding rates are more increased. Stuff around healthy eating is slightly skewed because there’s a cultural diversity there which means that the figures just don’t come across in the same way.”

He said being “realistic”, people know what the challenges are in the town, and they shouldn’t be shied away from, adding: “I think reflecting on it, I don’t think there’s anything in here that I’m not seeking to try and improve and change, even the ones that are [already] improved.”

The mayor was keen to point out that “we are no longer first” in any of the individual categories. First is the worst in this context, as being first means that an area is worst hit by a factor of deprivation. In 2019, Middlesbrough was worst nationally for income deprivation.