Talk area up despite shock stats
It’s time to talk up Craigneuk — despite shock statistics dragging the place down.
That is the view of area councillor Kenneth Duffy, who spoke out this week following the publication of new figures in the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD).
The national index has rated Craigneuk as one of the most deprived in areas in Scotland after almost 7,000 small areas throughout the country were assessed by Scottish Government experts.
The rankings go from number one as most deprived to the least deprived at number 6,976.
Central Craigneuk was ranked at number 38, placing it in the top five percent Scottish areas struggling with poverty.
Assessors analysed seven key areas and scored Central Craigneuk just one out of 10 for income, employment, health, education and crime. For housing it scored two out of 10, and access to services was marked as six out of 10.
Councillor Kenneth Duffy, whose ward covers Craigneuk, said: “Whilst these figures of course cause some concern, it’s important that we’re careful not to talk down Craigneuk and the wonderful community spirit I’ve witnessed during my time as a councillor.
“Whether its’s the outstanding work of the Craigneuk Community Council, the council’s groundbreaking Club 365 project tackling holiday hunger in Berryhill Primary school or our previous community clean up — clearing 35 tonnes of waste from our community — I firmly believe that whilst Craigneuk has its problems, the solutions are to be found here too.”
“It is similar to other areas experiencing the same levels of poverty across Scotland.
“I think there is an issue with people looking at this data zone and stigmatising an entire area, when actually the problem is not Craigneuk, the problem is the inequality we have in our society.”
While the central portion of Craigneuk has extremely high deprivation levels, other parts of the area are faring slightly better.
It is split into six different spots by assessors where the overall deprivaton ranking ranges from 38 to 235.
However, each of the six areas scores just 1 out of 10 for income, employment, health, and education.
Meanwhile, it was found that other Wishaw areas also perform very poorly in terms of income, employment, health, and education. These include parts of Overtown, Newmains and Greenhead.
The SIMD is the Scottish Government’s standard approach to identify areas of multiple deprivation in Scotland.
It can help improve understanding about the circumstances of people living in the most deprived areas in Scotland.
The index is also considered helpful for politicians to allow effective targeting of policies and funding to tackle areas of multiple deprivation.
The Scottish Government website states: “People using SIMD will often focus on the data zones below a certain rank, for example, the five, 10, 15 or 20 per cent most deprived data zones in Scotland.
“SIMD is an area-based measure of relative deprivation: not every person in a highly deprived area will themselves be experiencing high levels of deprivation.
“Data zones in rural areas tend to cover a large land area and reflect a more mixed picture of people experiencing different levels of deprivation.
“This means that SIMD is less helpful at identifying the smaller pockets of deprivation found in more rural areas, compared to the larger pockets found in urban areas.
“SIMD domain indicators can still be useful in rural areas if analysed separately from urban data zones or combined with other data.”