Agenda and minutes

No declarations of interest were made.

No members of the public were present.

Judith Langdon, Cath Fallon, Deserie Mansfield and Ian Bakewell delivered the presentation and reports, and answered the members’ questions, with additional comments from Cabinet Member Sara Jones.

Challenge:

The report doesn’t indicate the deprivation seen on the ground. How can we, as an authority, make known where the deprivation is?

Yes, this mirrors what we officers see, which is a dispersed nature of deprivation. We are working to map the deprivation at postcode level, which shows it peppered across the county. Because it is so dispersed, it has the effect of not moving the dial, as the concentrations aren’t great enough. Nevertheless, if someone is experiencing poverty, low income, and the associated effects, the experience is the same regardless of where they live. But it is difficult to show that picture. There are action groups associated with each of the priorities as part of the Tackling Poverty Plan; an early task for the Inequality group will be to build a more sophisticated and compelling data piece that considers what it would look like if all the isolated dots were grouped into a hypothetical ward, and how it would compare to other areas. Along with quantitative research and putting the voices of those experiencing deprivation at the centre of this, there are some areas that have developed a variety of commissions to bring people’s lived experience to the fore. That will be an early and important project to shine a light on the dispersed deprivation; it might also help us with an evidence base for, for example, lobbying for an Inequality Grant from Welsh Government.

We are now in a situation where housing inflation is becoming a problem for renters. Ex-Social Housing has been sold back to private developers who are then raising prices beyond what those in the area can afford.

The change in Homeless circumstance has flushed out and highlighted many hidden situations that we would have dealt with for a very long period. We are now dealing directly with a significant number of people who fall into the category of deprivation, and who have nothing behind them. That gives us a significant cohort of people who are tangible and who we can work with, and to whom we can target much-needed resources. The accommodation issue is correct, we are facing it all the time: trying to secure people private rented accommodation but can’t because of the level of rent.

In terms of food poverty, we have a system of data analysis funded by Welsh Government. It is a fledgling project – we are building the platform now – which will add mapping of food producers and businesses, and we will be able to add data down to ward level. We can overlay the food poverty access scenario. Access to fresh, nutritional food within our county is one of the biggest issues; this includes through schools and land use. We are overlaying food poverty data with some of the data that shows the potential blackspots mentioned earlier, and  ...  view the full minutes text for item 3.