Time and tide are washing away our coastal communities

Author Torsten Bell suggests in his book, Great Britain? How We Get Our Future Back, that the island got the name Greater Britannia to distinguish it from Lesser Britannia (Brittany, France). It has nothing to do with empire, or being the top nation, so perhaps we should detach from the nostalgia of being a great power and focus on something more useful: building a better Britain.

The government’s report on England’s indices of deprivation has been published. Jaywick remains the most deprived neighbourhood in England along with towns like Blackpool, Middlesborough, Rochdale, and Hull. I can’t write with any knowledge about deprivation in the North of England but I have seen first-hand what it does in the South.

Why has the situation not shown signs of improvement after all the much-hyped talk of ‘levelling up’? For example, why has there been a substantial increase in food bank use post-2010? In 2010-11, a total of 61,000 food parcels were distributed. In 2025, the Trussell Trust reported that it alone had distributed 2.9 million parcels and that is only one of many food bank providers in England. One food bank worker in Hastings shares that people often haven’t eaten in days. This could be dismissed as catastrophising the situation but there are other signs of concern such as the return of Victorian-era diseases such as rickets etc. Even if people can eat, it’s often highly-processed foods because although unhealthy they are affordable.

The harsh truth

The 2025 report is as bad as it has ever been – indeed possibly worse than the previous report in 2019. The BBC Verify report ‘England’s most deprived areas named’ is telling, as it depicts a run-down town centre with St George’s flags in the windows. The failure to tackle deprivation is breeding resentment and supercharging English ultranationalism.

Is Britain broken? Bell says not, but that it is stagnating with low economic growth, low wages, and high levels of deprivation. The Broken Britain theorists want to smash up our institutions and start again but we have been subjected to this methodology over the last 15 years. The results? Austerity and growing dissatisfaction with the government. It’s all very well to cut taxes so that the wealthy can buy a better car but where will they run them if the highways are full of potholes?

So, how do we fix deprivation?

For a start, issue a copy of Great Britain? to every minister, make them read it, and apply its findings to their portfolio. Bell, after all, is part of the government. Labour’s lack of planning has impacted their efforts to fix public services says the Institute of Government, so Torsten Bell’s book could fill that gap. What were Labour doing in the 12 years of opposition apart from squabbling with each other?

What are the problems?

There are many but let’s refine them down to four main concerns: health and social care, education, housing, and regeneration.

Health

Much of the problem relates to silo management: a lack of communication between organisations. For example, councils balancing their books by making cuts to adult social care create a backlog of patients in the local hospitals. As a result, nearly 150,000 people aged 90 and above wait 12 hours in England’s A&Es each year.

The way to tackle this silo is restructuring local government and the NHS so the two work in tandem rather than against each other. NHS spending constantly props up hospitals, which are bottomless pits of demand, so if we invest in community health so patients can be seen locally, this will ease hospitals’ workloads. This means GP practices will need to form multi-functional polyclinics to improve access to services; pharmacists will need more support as they provide a lot of community care. A lot of diagnostic work could be done out of hospital, in supermarket car parks, community centres etc, thereby decentralising care. This is where Starmer’s much vaunted AI revolution can be seen in action.

Education, education, education

East Kent has a class-based education system where entry into grammar schools shows few disadvantaged pupils get a place. The Sutton Trust points out that grammar schools have on average 2.7% of pupils receiving free school meals. Bearing in mind that grammar schools in ‘highly selective’ areas like Kent select up to 25% of each annual cohort, this selection by income makes things worse.

On top of this sits the national curriculum which seems guaranteed to fail the majority. A national curriculum review for England is in hand but whether it will reduce the number of NEETS (Not in Employment, Education or Training) is debatable. Thanet has a substantial number of NEETS, and so far little has been done to improve further and vocational education. There is a fixation on higher education and universities but this does nothing for deprived areas like Thanet.

Housing

According to the government, all we have to do is build more homes. Even Bell advocates for local authorities to authorise more planning consent, and there is a germ of truth in what Bell suggests, but it is not the whole story.

A 2023 article on urban development showed that Thanet had 22% of its land developed. Excluding parks and gardens, this roughly translates to 16% but the fact remains: one of the most deprived areas of Kent has the second highest level of development. Kent does suffer from the London Boroughs buying up housing and decamping some of their population into the county – Thanet has been subject to this problem – but nevertheless, we must conclude that it is not simply the number of houses built but rather the type of housing which is the problem.

Here I would suggest three things. Firstly, emphasis should be on building social homes, not affordable or buy-to-let homes. Council housing in the district should cease, and finally the formation of housing cooperatives for those seeking a first home or downsized home upon retirement should be encouraged by central government.

How this would happen would be an entire article in itself so we will discuss that another time.

Regeneration

A project I joined in 2018, a road improvement scheme for Ramsgate, may now be shelved. It’s taken Thanet District Council (TDC) nearly eight years of inactivity to culminate a project they have failed to complete. Whether it is TDC’s fault or KCC’s (Kent County Council) pointless chiseling for cash makes no difference. It is their combined failure to complete projects quickly and satisfactorily. It is silo management again with two councils having the dialog of the deaf.

This is a national problem. What Went Wrong with HS2 is the biggest, most egregious example but it is not alone. There is a lack of investment; deprived areas submit bids for funding which takes time, manpower, and money, only to be unsuccessful. I remember one project where we lost out to a harbour in Dorset, which is hardly a deprived coastal area.

Alternatively, the scheme takes so long to implement that everyone forgets what it’s about in the first place like the Ramsgate highway scheme. This has to change – Labour’s pride of place funding scheme sounds great but £5bn is a lot of money. Over 10 years for the entirety of England, what’s that going to do? Thanet received £1.5mn, which will be lost in the works if I know TDC. It’s possible that the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government noted that it took TDC and KCC eight years not to do a project, has washed their hands of Thanet, and instead is concentrating funding on the “red wall” areas of the north.

Where do we go from here?

We need to smash up management silos of all kinds.
We need to encourage cooperation and not parochialism.
We need to build the right houses in the right places.
We need to engage properly with the community and not constantly seek to avoid contact at all levels. People may be angry, but they can be persuaded if the right approach is taken.
Local government reorganisation and devolution is a priority, to cut down on those silos and give communities some agency.
Community provision of healthcare should be turbocharged.
Education is for everyone, not just a minority. We are wasting too much talent with the current system.
Above all we need action, activity, and people with drive.
For those who don’t think change is necessary, look around you. Why are the populists doing so well? It’s because government is not governing.