Essex resort of Jaywick named England's most deprived town | Society | The Guardian

Essex resort of Jaywick named England's most deprived town | Society | The Guardian

Neil Stock swings his Jaguar into the car park by the sandy south-facing beach and, with the sun beating down on what at first glance could be a bohemian seaside community, says: "It's embarrassing isn't it? We're only 60 miles from London, in the affluent south-east and here we are in the most deprived place in the country."

Jaywick, a ward of Tendring district council in north-east Essex, has earned the unhappy distinction of being placed first in the dauntingly named Indices of Multiple Deprivation 2010. Using statistics for income, employment, health, disability, crime and living standards, the government report ranks 32,482 neighbourhoods by local authority area according to where they stand in a national poverty league table. At the opposite end of the scale, the Hertfordshire suburb of Chorleywood, where houses cost 30 times as much as property in Jaywick, is named least deprived.