England’s children’s commissioner has declared a “national emergency” over the conditions in which children are growing up, warning that millions face avoidable disadvantages shaped by where they live, amid widespread problems in education, mental health, community safety and access to public services.
Rachel de Souza made the declaration in an interview with the Observer UK, following the most comprehensive analysis yet undertaken of childhood conditions across England. Her forthcoming report, The Childhood Lottery, examines 162 measures of children’s lives and uses 96 indicators to rank local authorities according to the challenges facing young people.
“I’m calling it a state of emergency because, as children’s commissioner, I cannot sit and do nothing,” de Souza told the Observer. “It’s shocking to me that we would allow children to grow up in some of the situations they’re growing up in, and the narrative in Westminster is not about those children.”
The analysis found that a third of children are not ready for school at the age of five, while more than half of pupils fail to achieve a good standard in English and mathematics GCSEs by the age of 16. Twelve per cent of young people feel unsafe in their local area, and at least one million children had active referrals to mental health services last year.
The findings reveal pronounced differences between local authorities. Middlesbrough, in North Yorkshire, was ranked the most challenging place to grow up, followed by Hounslow in west London and Bradford in West Yorkshire. Cheshire East, Merton in London and Surrey were among the highest-ranked areas, reflecting comparatively favourable conditions across the measures assessed.
Middlesbrough scored 408 out of a possible 960 points, the lowest result among the 149 local authorities included in the rankings. The area recorded the highest rate of children feeling unsafe and the lowest proportion of pupils reaching the expected level of development by the end of the reception year in primary school. Relatively few playgrounds, alongside high levels of school absence and exclusion, contributed to its position.
Cheshire East, which scored 730 points, ranked first. The north-west authority performed well across a range of indicators, including low rates of children living in temporary accommodation, limited school absence, high vaccination coverage and substantial access to dental care. A high proportion of local schools also provide wraparound childcare.
De Souza said the figures exposed “massive disparities” in children’s experiences. Children in Blackpool, Lancashire, were 27 times more likely to be missing from education than pupils in Lambeth, south London, and 46 times more likely to be excluded than children in Wiltshire. The proportion achieving grade 5 or above in English and mathematics GCSEs ranged from 70% in Richmond upon Thames to 31% in Knowsley, near Liverpool.
Differences extended beyond education. Almost a quarter of children in Croydon, south London, reported feeling unsafe, compared with fewer than 7% in Bedford. Young people in Merseyside were at least 13 times more likely to be stopped and searched than those in areas covered by West Mercia police.
Access to recreational facilities and youth services also varied sharply. Redbridge, in north-east London, had six outdoor play spaces for every 10,000 young people, compared with 61 for the 7,800 young people in Rutland, in the East Midlands. Camden Borough Council in north London spent £421 on youth services for each teenager, while Slough, Herefordshire, Halton and Warrington reported no expenditure in that category.
The rankings also show why deprivation alone cannot explain children’s circumstances. Hounslow recorded the second-lowest overall score, while Haringey, a north London borough with similar levels of deprivation, ranked seventh-highest. De Souza identified nursery provision and breakfast clubs as important factors in Haringey’s performance. Other comparatively well-performing areas nevertheless showed serious weaknesses: Leicestershire ranked among the ten least challenging places overall but had the country’s lowest access to mental health support teams.
Hampshire also performed well overall, yet young people there faced a median wait of 118 days between referral and a second contact for mental health treatment, compared with six days in Rutland. Wokingham, in Berkshire, combined low child poverty with very low spending on youth services. Children in Westminster were more likely to experience multiple house moves and instability than those in Hartlepool, County Durham.
Children in state care faced particularly pronounced inconsistencies. In some parts of England, nearly 90% of children in care were placed outside their home area, compared with fewer than 20% elsewhere. In Tameside, Greater Manchester, half of looked-after children had three or more social workers within a year; in Hartlepool, the proportion was 3%.
De Souza described children growing up amid conditions that she said were unacceptable in modern Britain. During a visit to a high-performing school in Middlesbrough, pupils spoke about learning the clarinet but also about drug users outside their homes and fears about personal safety. Some had witnessed knife crime, while there were concerns that others had seen a murder and watched a body being removed.
The commissioner rejected stereotypes portraying young people either as unable to cope or as threatening. “I don’t buy into the idea that this is some kind of weak generation,” she said. “I’m seeing the opposite. I’m seeing kids in the toughest environments really working hard to try to build a life.”
The report draws on information from the Department for Education and ten other public bodies. Forty-two measures were newly collected by the commissioner using her statutory data powers. Bury and Nottinghamshire were excluded after failing to respond to a statutory data request, while the City of London and Isles of Scilly were omitted because their small populations could distort the statistics.
De Souza called on the prime minister to establish a children’s emergency fund to bring services above a minimum standard nationwide. She also proposed appointing a deputy mayor responsible for children in each area as part of the devolution programme.
Education Secretary Lucy Powell said the government was committed to ensuring that children’s opportunities were not determined by where they grew up. She cited investment in childcare, school standards, community support, the national youth strategy, Young Futures Hubs and training and employment opportunities, and pledged to work with local leaders to address the report’s findings.
The former cabinet minister Alan Milburn, meanwhile, is preparing recommendations on the crisis involving more than one million young people who are not in education, employment or training. He has warned that the UK risks producing a “lost generation” unless the course of children’s lives changes.
