Challenges to Levelling Up: Post-COVID precarity in “left behind” Stoke-on-Trent

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic both revealed and intensified the United Kingdom's (UK) regional inequalities. The UK is widely recognised as one of the most regionally unbalanced nations in the developed world, with many “left behind” places across the North and Midlands like Stoke-on-Trent falling way behind parts of London and the Southeast of England in terms of living standards in the neoliberal era. Since 2019 the UK Government have promised to “Level Up” the UK, culminating in the publication of the Levelling Up White Paper in 2022. This pinpointed the need to raise living standards, opportunity, and prosperity across the UK, with Stoke identified as a priority area. Primarily utilising qualitative case study data (N = 15) provided by Citizens Advice Staffordshire North and Stoke-on-Trent (CASNS), this article explicates how there are myriad challenges to the Levelling Up strategy in Stoke. Suffering from a historical legacy of the loss of its ceramics and manufacturing industries, the paper outlines how the city-region contains a structural cocktail of disadvantage including low paid jobs, welfare erosion, indebtedness, destitution, and food insecurity. The article closes by discussing the implications of these structural problems for the Government's Levelling Up agenda, suggesting that only a transformative shift in both allocated resources and neoliberal spatial development will regional imbalances be adequately addressed in places like Stoke-on-Trent.

COVID crisis, austerity and the ‘Left Behind’ city: Exploring poverty and destitution in Stoke-on-Trent

“…While the average weekly earnings of an employee in South-East cities like London and Reading stands at £751 and £671 respectively, in Stoke it is £465. Therefore, wages are well below the UK average of £555 and one of the lowest across Britain (Etherington et al, 2022a). Barriers to childcare because of its high cost has been cited as a major cause of inactivity for both women and in-work poverty (Institute of Employment Studies, 2022).…”

“…Although UC operates as in-work earnings top up (replacing Working Tax Credit), it is evident in Martyn's case that it is inadequate to support a sustainable income and that there are few opportunities for people in low-paid employment to 'progress' to higher earnings. Despite being employed many people in Martyn's position are vulnerable to debt and destitution (Etherington et al, 2022b;Lloyd, 2018), exacerbated by recent increases in the cost-of-living. Indeed, a CASNS report (2022: 9) highlighted the marked increase in the numbers of people seeking advice in relation to fuel and utility bills (also see Table 3): 'When the average bill rises to £3,549 in October 2022 then the increase from April 2021 will be £47.19 a week and even the support package for people on means tested benefits will only amount to £23.08 p.w.…”

“…The evolution of Stoke since the 1960s has meant the city has emerged as a core left behind locality (Etherington et al, 2022a;Jones, 2019;MacLeod and Jones, 2018). Deindustrialisation and austerity, in particular, have formed key drivers of localised problems which have been exacerbated by the current economic climate.…”

“…Politically recognising both austerity's role in reinforcing labour market inequalities and the importance of alternative policies that would help to ameliorate some of the structural problems outlined above is essential (see: Etherington et al, 2022aEtherington et al, 2022bJones, 2019). Such alternatives include campaigns to bolster welfare and employment rights (CASNS, 2022), promoting well-paid work; and investing in affordable childcare.…”

Action on Poverty and Hardship in the English Potteries

“…Sadly, such government initiatives were short lived, but a legacy of change activism towards tackling poverty lives on in the city today, which is reflected across the articles in this special edition. With the cost of living increasing and welfare rates being insufficient to meet basic needs in families in the UK (May et al, 2020) and employment incomes in Stoke-on-Trent being less than average, and the further exacerbation of the negative legacy of the pandemic continuing to bite (Etherington et al, 2021), it is no wonder that city resources are strained and in need of levelling-up uplift. Stoke-on-Trent is a well utilised dispersal area for asylum seekers in the UK (Sturge, 2019) and dispersal areas are more commonly recognised as impoverished (Easton and Butcher, 2018;Cruddas, 2007;Zetter and Pearl, 1999).…”