London has England’s highest levels of child poverty, data shows
London has England’s highest levels of child poverty and most extreme concentrations of hardship, data has revealed.In two boroughs more than half of children live below the breadline.In Britain, child poverty rates flatlined in 2024-25 compared with the previous year.About 4 million youngsters (27%) live in households earning less than 60% of the national median income after housing costs are taken into account.The figures in effect set a benchmark for the government’s child poverty reduction strategy, which starts in earnest next month with the abolition of the two-child benefit limit.
It aims to take 550,000 children out of poverty by 2029.Pat McFadden, the work and pensions secretary, said rising household incomes and slight falls in food insecurity rates showed the government was “beginning to make a difference”, but he said there was more to do to turn the poverty tide.An estimated 38% of children in London were in relative poverty, compared with 32% in north-west England and the West Midlands, and 30% in the north-east.The south-east had the lowest child poverty rate in England at 20.8%.
Experts said poverty levels in London were driven by its housing crisis,High rents resulted in the UK’s highest levels of material poverty – a measure of a family’s inability to afford basic essentials such as a warm home or fresh fruit,At council level the highest child poverty rates in England were found in three inner-city boroughs in east London: Tower Hamlets, where the rate is 50,3%, Hackney (50,1%) and Newham (44.
9%),Measured by parliamentary constituency, child poverty rates were highest in Hackney North and Stoke Newington (60,2%), the inner London seat where Diane Abbott is the MP,Outside the capital, the highest rates are in Birmingham, where 115,000 children (44,9%) live in poverty, Pendle in Lancashire (42.
5%) and Manchester (42.3%).Within the overall UK child poverty rate of 27%, Wales recorded 32% of under-20s in poverty, followed by England with 29%, Scotland (21%) and Northern Ireland (19%).The latest poverty statistics, contained in the Households Below Average Income report, used a new method designed to record a more accurate picture of household incomes in the years since 2021-22.Nearly three-quarters of children in poverty live in households where at least one adult works, 40% of all people living below the breadline are disabled and 2.
8 million children are classed as living in “deep poverty”, in households with incomes of less than 40% of the poverty threshold,Campaigners said the data showed millions of people on low incomes still struggled to afford basic items such as food and energy,The use of food banks was at near record levels and too many people continued to experience the trauma of poverty,Peter Matejic, the chief analyst at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, said: “The latest statistics show overall poverty rose slightly and there was little change in child poverty in the first year of the Labour government … The bottom line is that far too many families are still in poverty,”As well as scrapping the two-child benefit limit, the government hopes its expansion of free school meals to all children in households in receipt of universal credit, coupled with increases in the national living wage, will help drive down poverty.
Sophie Livingstone, the chair of the End Child Poverty coalition, said: “Scrapping the two-child limit to benefits was a good start, but there is still work for the UK government to do … to give children the best start in life.”
Castleford’s sensational spell blows Bradford away to kick off birthday celebrations
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Sinner continues smooth Miami progress with win over Tiafoe as rivals fall
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From Laurel Hubbard to sex testing in five years: why the Olympics U-turned on transgender rules | Sean Ingle
The IOC’s shift in position on trans women in elite sports is seismic, but new president Kirsty Coventry is reflecting a changed political climateBy any measure, it amounts to one of the most astonishing U-turns from a governing body in modern times. Four and a half years ago, the International Olympic Committee was lauding the appearance of the first transgender weightlifter, Laurel Hubbard, at an Olympics, and issuing a framework to sports saying that transgender women “should not be deemed to have an unfair or disproportionate competitive advantage” over biological women.Now it has not only ripped up every last morsel of that guidance but also performed a spectacular 180-degree turn.Over 10 tightly worded pages, the IOC now states that the female category must be protected for fairness and safety reasons, and makes it clear that SRY screening – a sex test using saliva or a cheek-swab – will be used to determine biological sex.It is a monumental shift that means transgender women and athletes with differences in sex development (DSD), who were reported as female at birth but have internal testes and have undergone male puberty, are now banned from the female category at all future Olympics
Prem Rugby introduces minimum salary floor of £5.4m for clubs next season
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Transgender women athletes banned from female events at Olympics by IOC
The International Olympic Committee has banned transgender women and DSD athletes from the female category of events at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics and future Games.Kirsty Coventry, the president of the IOC, said the landmark decision had been taken because “it would not be fair for biological males to compete in the female category”.The IOC has also confirmed that all athletes wanting to compete in the female category at future Olympics will have to undergo a one-off SRY (sex determining region Y gene) screening to detect their biological sex. Usually that is done via an unintrusive cheek-swab or saliva test.Coventry said the decision, which applies to elite individual and team sports, was based on science and would protect the fairness and safety of women’s sport
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