Ruth Poverty Fact Book Parent

The Poverty Fact Book was developed to be a useful document to share widely across the council and with partners in order to understand the levels of poverty in Leeds; inform policies and assist in the City’s anti-poverty agenda.

 This resource contains national and locally sourced data and information to help define and analyse the different themes of poverty. Most of the data discussed is at the Leeds district level. Some data is only available at a national level, where this is the case; an estimate for Leeds has been calculated using nationally informed assumptions against the Leeds population figure.  For example it is reported by the DWP that there are 12.4million people living in absolute poverty in the UK.  This was 19% of the UK population in 2016/17. Therefore, because Leeds is statistically considered to mirror the UK demographically, it can be assumed that approximately 19% of the Leeds population in 2016/17 was living in absolute poverty. This equates to 148,531 people in Leeds.

 The Poverty Fact Book is available as an online resource which includes a glossary of terms and a referenced list of all data sources, where to access them, how often the data is available and whether the data can be drilled down below the Leeds district level. The book is split into 10 Sections to help access required information by theme.

There is a wide range of data which is published at various intervals throughout an annual period. This means a hardcopy book may contain aspects of out of date information. To overcome this, the references section at the back of the book contains links on where to access the data and information on how frequently the data is available.  There is also a data refresh date to inform the reader of when the data is estimated to be refreshed by the Financial Inclusion Team.

People in Poverty

• 14 million people in the UK were in Relative Poverty in 2017/18 (after housing costs are deducted from income)
• Relative Poverty is estimated to affect 173,000 people in Leeds (after housing costs are deducted from income)
• A couple with 2 children are in poverty if they earn £425/week or less (after housing costs)
• A single adult with no children is in poverty on earnings of £152/week or less (after housing costs)

Children in Poverty

• Latest local estimates from HMRC estimate that 32,805 children under 20 in Leeds were in poverty in 2016 (29,660 children under 16)
• 71% of children in poverty were from a household where at least one person was in work in 2017/18

In-work Poverty and Worklessness

• 5.4 million UK adults that are in poverty are from households where at least 1 person is in work. This was affecting 13.7% of all working age adults in the UK in 2017/18. If this rate is applied to Leeds’ working age population, it could be estimated that over 70,000 working age adults across the city are from working households and in poverty.

Wages and Employment

• The Living Wage Foundation recommend employers outside of London pay £9.00/hour from April 2019
• The Government’s National Living Wage is set at £8.21/hour for all employees aged 25 and over
• The Government’s National Minimum Wage is set at £7.70/hour for employees aged 21-24
• On average, Leeds residents are paid £12.48/hour
• An estimated 67,000 FTE Leeds residents earned less than the Living Wage Foundation’s Living Wage in 2018
• It is estimated that over 10,900 Leeds workers are on zero hour contracts

Welfare Reform and Universal Credit

• Under occupancy changes under Welfare Reform affected over 5,270 Leeds households in Sep 2018
• The Benefit Cap affected over 800 Leeds households in Sep 2018
• Over 19,000 households in Leeds now have to pay 25% of their council tax due to changes to Council Tax Support. This is an average of £173 owed per year in Council Tax by effected households.
• As of January 2018, 5,596 individuals in Leeds were claiming Universal Credit, 42% of which were in employment.

Food Poverty

• Over 27,000 people in Leeds have received food through a foodbank or food parcel provider in 2017/18, over 27% more than in 2014

Fuel Poverty

• Almost 44,000 Leeds households were in fuel poverty in 2015
• Over 9,000 fuel poor Leeds householders paid their fuel bills via a pre-payment meter

Debt

• Average household debt in the UK (excluding mortgages) was £7,549 in October 2017.
• Average consumer borrowing was £3,966 in October 2017
• An estimated 19,125 people in Leeds had outstanding payday loan debts in 2016
• Almost 5,000 people in Leeds had outstanding debts with a rent-to-own company in 2016

Leeds Credit Union

• Membership stands at 30,815 as of Dec 2018
• Membership growth of 144% since 2005
• Loan book value of £6.8 million

Index of Deprivation

• In the 2015 index, 164,000 people in Leeds lived in areas that are ranked amongst the most deprived 10% nationally, the corresponding figure in the 2010 Index was 150,000 people