Beyond Benefits Street: Ghettos with 70% unemployment and no future

‘In some, more than two thirds of working-age adults pick up a benefit cheque instead of a pay packet, while even those in work are often banking other handouts.

A detailed analysis of every street in England and Wales broke down neighbourhoods into areas of about 1,500 people.

These 35,000 areas were then cross-referenced with benefit claim statistics to identify the nation’s most “workless” areas.

While Winson Green in Birmingham, which features in the TV documentary, ranked only 1,357th on the list, the real benefits blackspots were found in Liverpool, Middlesbrough, Rochdale and Thanet, Kent.

Yet the most startling figures came from an area of Blackburn where 71.9 per cent of the working-age population claims benefits.’

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