Building a picture of poverty in Bradford

The Church Urban Fund’s new mobile app and online poverty data tool states that 36 per cent of children in Otley Road are living in poverty, as are 41 per cent of pensioners.

They say that some of the most affluent areas are neighbours to communities suffering from extreme deprivation. In many places, deprivation and relative affluence can be found in the same community.

Mr Jan de Villiers, of Wellsprings Together Bradford, said: “This year’s figures show that deprivation is particularly concentrated in Northern industrial cities, but what people will find when they use the tool is that poverty is everywhere.

“For people living in these inner city areas where traditional industries have declined, it feels like the recession hit in the 1980s and never really went away. We think of these and other communities as ‘neglected’, but we’ve seen that people in these towns really look out for each other.

“People in the poorest areas are running debt counselling services, donating to food banks and supporting their vulnerable neighbours. I hope everyone readers will download our app, explore deprivation where they live and help us to tackle poverty.”

The first point to make is that the Otley Road referred to is in BD3, beyond Bradford Cathedral, not the A6038 that runs through Shipley and out towards Ilkley.

On a visit to Otley Road, instead of the things normally associated with poverty and deprivation – boarded up properties, burned out cars, uncollected rubbish – we found new housing, including 11 ‘affordable homes for rent’ by the Manningham Housing Association on North Wing, tidy areas and plenty of cars.

In the area described, we came across one boarded-up house on Hillside Terrace, one boarded-up shop on North Wing, and on Heap Lane the Bradford Community Church building up for sale.

Opposite the historic Cock and Bottle pub, in yet another period of transition, we talked to 40-year-old Andy Donegan, manager of the Banner-Man printing company, which has been in the area for almost three years.

“You’ll find patches of poverty further up along Leeds Road, where new arrivals to Bradford tend to come – but round here the main problems come from drugs and alcohol,” he said, and showed us the ground behind the building.

“We’ve just picked up 60 vodka bottles and we’ve cleared away lots of disused needles. There are managed estates round here,” he said, pointing to the pale yellow painted blocks of flats nearby. “I wouldn’t say poverty is the issue here.”

Mr Donegan has lived in Bradford for nine years. He’d much rather be here than his own home town, Ripon, in North Yorkshire.

“I am around this area late at night because I am a swimming coach. I have had no trouble. In Ripon as a young lad I saw trouble all the time. All you ever hear is how bad it is in Bradford,” he added.

Across the road is the former Roman Catholic St Margaret’s Church. This is now the base of the Bradford Metropolitan Food Bank, which has been dishing out free bags of food to professional agencies since 2004.

One of the volunteers is Keith Thomson, a former Bradford Labour councillor and writer of the Telegraph & Argus’s Wednesday environment column. He was not surprised by the general thrust of the Church Urban Fund report, but said he didn’t think it was going to help.

Nor is it possible to gauge deprivation from the increased activity of the food bank – 700 bags of food in May and June, up from 500 bags a month round about Christmas – because their client area is the entire Bradford district.

“There’s an awful lot of voluntary work going on in this area. I can’t see what this information adds to what we know, other than that we are living in an increasingly unequal society,” Mr Thomson added.

The Church Urban Fund poverty tool and apps can be found at www.cuf.org.uk/poverty-in-numbers2013.