In October, the UK Government published the first update to the Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) since 2019. Packed full of data and insights on different domains of life across local places, the index was much anticipated by many working in economic development. We have been reviewing the data and asking: 

·       What trends have emerged in the new release?

·       Where should focus now be placed?

·       What do the stats say about local communities?

At GC Insight, our team regularly works on regeneration projects across the country, including in areas facing a range of deprivation challenges. A few months on from the publication of the IMD data, local areas are starting to translate its insights into plans and targeted interventions. In this article, we explore some of the data's key takeaways, the challenges it can present, and what it could mean for economic development.

What is the Index of Multiple Deprivation?

The Index of Multiple Deprivation is an official combined measure of the relative levels of deprivation in small areas across England known as Lower Super Output Areas (LSOAs). It brings together a variety of separate indicators of deprivation that are grouped into seven domains as part of the English Indices of Deprivation. Each of these domains represents a different aspect of deprivation in local areas, covering income, employment, education, health, crime, barriers to housing and services, and the living environment.

The Indices and Index are published by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. They were previously released in 2019 before the coronavirus pandemic, with the 2025 edition providing the latest release. Within the data it is possible to see the relative rank of deprivation in each small area for each domain and the index overall. This allows the identification of those small areas which are among the least deprived nationally and those among the most deprived nationally, as well as the primary drivers of deprivation. There are separate indices of deprivation in each of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, produced to different timescales.

Why is the data important?

The IMD data provides a view of how small areas perform across the country. This can provide a wide range of insights and help to pinpoint what life may be like in these places in a variety of aspects - such as barriers to housing and services – and therefore the interventions that might be helpful in response. The update to the data in 2025 offers new insights, with communities - and the wider world - having changed significantly over the last 6 years, as a result of the coronation pandemic, cost of living crises, and a variety of global events and factors.

The data can't provide a blanket judgement of different places, and it doesn't explain qualitative factors that may cause deprivation. It does though provide a guide for where to look and focus, which can lead to richer insights through research and local knowledge of places. The small area nature of the data is also important for identifying specific trends and improving targeting in neighbourhoods and local communities, with levels of deprivation sometimes varying significantly across towns and cities.

What does the data tell us? 

The single most deprived neighbourhood remains Tendring 018a (Jaywick & St Osyth, near Clacton-on-Sea), and seven of the ten most deprived neighbourhoods nationally are in Blackpool. At the same time, the data suggests that ‘new’ deprivation is the exception rather than the rule with 82% of neighbourhoods in the most deprived decile in 2025 unchanged from 2019, albeit the two IMD are not directly comparable. Deprivation is not neatly contained within a small number of councils as 65% of local authority districts include at least one neighbourhood in the most deprived decile.

Some local authorities stand out because a large share of their neighbourhoods fall into the most deprived bands:  Middlesbrough has 45 of its 90 LSOAs (50.0%) in the most deprived 10%, while Birmingham has 282 of 659 (42.8%), Hartlepool 24 of 57 (42.1%) and Kingston upon Hull 70 of 168 (41.7%). At the extreme end, Blackpool has 18 of 94 LSOAs (19.1%) in the most deprived 1% nationally, followed by Middlesbrough (14.4%).

Crucially, IMD 2025 also shows that the most deprived neighbourhoods face very high levels of income and employment deprivation, often layered across multiple domains. Among the most deprived 1% of neighbourhoods, 68.1% of people are income deprived and 42.0% of working-age people are employment deprived; for children, 83.7% are income deprived (compared with 11.3% in the least deprived areas), and people in the most deprived 1% are over nine times as likely to be income deprived as those in the least deprived areas (68.1% vs 7.3%).

What are some of the challenges in analysing the data?

While the new data is helpful in providing insights, it also presents some challenges for teams analysing what it means for local places and considering change over time. Some of these challenges include:

• Changes to the methodology - Changes to how deprivation is measured can make it difficult to assess the changes in a place's relative deprivation compared to 2019. The total number of indicators of deprivation has increased from 39 to 55, with new measures for metrics such as broadband connectivity and noise pollution.
• New area boundaries - The 2019 data was based on small areas (LSOAs) calculated in 2011 to reflect the number of residents and households in them at that time. The 2025 analysis is based on geographical boundaries from 2021 that have been updated to reflect changes in the scale of population over time and ensure areas continue to fall within recognised LSOA size categories, meaning there are a variety of changes. Some small areas now fall under different or new administrative geographies, and others have been combined, making comparisons challenging.
• The data only provides relative and quantitative insights - the data doesn't provide qualitative insights and doesn't provide all the information at once, requiring additional research by teams to consider next steps. As the data shows performance relative to other areas, improvements within individual areas are also not necessarily evident within the data (i.e. an area could have improved its actual but not relative performance, meaning change is not easily seen). 

What could the new data mean for local economic development?

Now, approaching three months on from the publication of the data, attention is increasingly turning to what the data says about local deprivation and how it can be used to target interventions to make a positive difference in local communities. Identifying the factors which can contribute to deprivation is important and can help to implement changes which positively impact on residents. Responding to deprivation - whether in responding to poor health outcomes, improving housing or tackling the roots of crime - is a key focus of economic development and regeneration teams across the country and the use of data can help ensure more effective targeting and outcomes.

It is also anticipated that the data could impact on the funding seen by some local places. Following the end of UKSPF, the UK Government is to focus resources on specific areas - including those with mayoral authorities, areas with clusters of industrial-strategy-aligned capabilities, and those neighbourhoods which are among the most deprived in the country. Neighbourhoods that are part of the Government's Pride in Place programme - which will see £5 billion invested into nearly 250 areas across the UK - based its selection methodology on the Index of Multiple Deprivation. The data will likely now have an important role in guiding focused efforts in these places moving forward.

At GC Insight, our team works in a variety of locations receiving Pride in Place funding and has also supported previous schemes to tackle deprivation in local communities. This includes researching local challenges, analysing data trends, developing strategy and preparing business cases for transformational investments. To find out more about our work or for a chat about the latest deprivation data, connect with our team.