The decline of England’s seaside resorts is an issue that has been hiding in plain sight for decades – but routinely met with indifference by those in power. Madeleine Bunting considers five trends that have contributed to the deprivation of these towns – and looks at possible paths to turning their fortunes around.
The seaside resort holds a powerful place in the English imagination, often used in films, novels and music videos as the stage on which to project anxieties and aspirations. One of the most common tropes is of decline, nostalgia and faded glory. These resorts are therefore full of contradiction: they promote themselves as pleasurable places for fun and entertainment, yet the suffering and deprivation is often all too evident only a few streets away from the amusement arcades, attractions and sea front.
Seaside deprivation has been an issue of regional inequality which has been hiding in plain sight, and it has been accompanied by a striking degree of complacency and indifference. The poorest wards in the UK are in seaside resorts (such as in Clacton and Blackpool) yet the plight of resorts has never provoked the kind of political engagement and public debate that the inner cities attracted in the 80s, and it does not fit into the current debates around the North/South divide. The House of Lords’ pioneering study of the issue in 2019 (with a follow-up in 2023) stressed how many in seaside resorts felt their concerns were ignored or neglected by central government. Under-resourced local authorities have been forced to compete for small pots of government funding while attempting to tackle two considerable challenges: how to ameliorate the entrenched poverty, and at the same time, imagining a new future for towns whose future prosperity cannot depend solely on tourism.
In my book, The Seaside, England’s Love Affair, I call this pattern of social and economic decline England’s “salt fringe”, analogous to the US rust belt as a process of deindustrialisation and social decline. It afflicts towns on every English coastline from Hastings on the south coast to Clacton on the east and Weston-Super-Mare on the west. At the root of this plight is the challenge of dealing with an exceptional combination and concentration of five trends.
Five factors giving rise to the decline of English seaside towns
Firstly, wage levels in seaside resorts are amongst the lowest in the country, in part because these towns’ economies are dominated by care and hospitality, traditionally low paid sectors, and there is a lot of seasonal work.
Secondly, the population of many seaside resorts is ageing; Minehead and Skegness are the oldest in the country. A pattern of people retiring to the coast combines with an exodus of young people leaving coastal towns in search of better jobs. This is part of what drives a pattern of ill health in these towns that has been highlighted by Chris Whitty, the UK’s Chief Medical Officer. High rates of long-term health conditions are exacerbated by loneliness when retirees find themselves without the communal and family support of their home town.
Thirdly, there is a persistent problem of low educational achievement and low aspiration in many coastal towns (it’s also hard to recruit and retain good quality teachers). The result is often low levels of social mobility with unskilled youngsters effectively caught in a trap of low pay. Minehead, for instance, has the lowest social mobility in the country.
Fourthly, one of the most striking aspects of my visits to over 40 resorts while writing the book was how a dysfunctional housing market was crippling these towns’ search for a future. In places like Torquay, there is little affordable housing and local employers were struggling to fill jobs because people couldn’t afford to live in the town. AirBnB and second homes have decimated the rental sector, with several councils in the South west having declared a housing emergency as locals are forced out of places where they have lived all their lives for lack of affordable housing. Places like Blackpool and Morecambe, meanwhile, face the opposite problem. Former hotels and boarding houses have been sold off to developers to be made into cheap bedsits – which acts as a magnet for people down on their luck in the surrounding region and who are looking for a second chance.
Related to this is the fifth trend: that seaside towns attract a highly vulnerable population, whether its people coming out of prison, fleeing domestic violence or struggling with substance abuse and mental ill-health. Around 8,000 people move to Blackpool every year and of that figure, around two thirds are on Universal Credit and nearly half are single males. While absentee landlords reap large profits from buy-to-let properties, public services – the NHS, social services, police – come under intense strain given the concentration of vulnerability in these areas.
Possible paths to a brighter future for our seaside towns
Taken together, these trends paint a picture of the harsh realities facing many seaside towns today. They are struggling to maintain and reinvigorate their offer as tourist attractions at the same time as coping with myriad social challenges. Local authorities have few resources either in terms of people or budget to take on the task of economic diversification, which is a tough sell to investors because of their peripherality on the coast, while Government “Levelling Up” funding emphasises productivity which often puts seaside towns at a disadvantage given their preponderance of low productivity sectors such as care and hospitality.
The salt fringe is a “wicked problem”, in the words of Lord Jim Knight, who has spent many years reflecting on the challenges as MP for Weymouth and also sat on the House of Lords Select Committee’s inquiry into seaside resorts told me. It’s the kind of policy challenge which requires engagement from multiple partners and leadership from central government with a dedicated ministerial brief.
Where might we look for a way forward for these towns?
One is raising political awareness about how important this problem is. While seaside resorts may represent a relatively small percentage of the national population, they still attract huge numbers of visitors; 13 million visit Blackpool every year and 4 million visit Skegness. These places are valued and often play a key role in people’s well-being and life satisfaction. Better data could also improve awareness and debate about the issue: coastal poverty has a distinctive pattern of clustering in pockets of a few streets that is not picked up at the level of the Lower Super Output Area. A common plea amongst researchers, therefore, is for more granular data.
In terms of investing infrastructure, the key area for Knight is connectivity: good public transport and good digital connections. Since Covid, a possible new future for some seaside resorts has emerged with the rise of home working and the increasing number of young families moving out of urban centres such as London and Manchester in search of more affordable housing. Some towns in Thanet such as Ramsgate and along the South coast such as Worthing are already seeing the benefits. The great success story of Brighton and Hove’s regeneration, pinned in large part around a sizable higher education sector, demonstrates the importance of good rail links.
We can also take heart from the countless examples around the coast of enterprising and dedicated community groups mobilising around local heritage and welfare projects such as soup runs, food banks and creative projects to inspire youngsters. Even more ambitious, the Campus for Future Living in Mablethorpe is a fascinating response to the prevalence of poor health on this Lincolnshire coast involving Lincoln medical school and a café for careworkers. At the other end of the country, the new visitor attraction of Eden North in Morecambe will be a major coup for the town with plans for a spectacular building akin to Cornwall’s Eden Project, while East Quay in the West Somerset port of Watchet combines major art gallery with workshops, accommodation, café and studios. It’s these kinds of inspiring projects which offer a way to start reimagining how England might continue to enjoy its much loved coasts.
Madeleine Bunting’s book, The Seaside, England’s Love Affair, will be out in paperback in May 2024.
All articles posted on this blog give the views of the author(s). They do not represent the position of LSE Inequalities, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Image credits: Banner image by Bob Deering via Shutterstock. Other photos by Madeleine Bunting.
Excellent article about a challenging issue. Having retired to Bexhill on Sea in 2012 ( from the European Environment Agency) I shall be getting the book and inviting Madeleine to be the opening speaker (at the iconic modernist gem the De La Warr Pavilion) of my proposed revival of Bexhill Lecture Society (1995-1965) which is to be called Bexhill Talks! When might she be available?
Thank you for this interesting article, Prof. Bunting. As the centuries pass, some towns die while others are born. I am not sure that you have properly answered the question in your title, but that would require case-by-case examination, which I discovered would take much too long due to the extreme number of towns involved.
In October 2020 the UK Government’s Office for National Statistics reported the results of its survey of coastal towns in England and Wales. This work had been prompted by qualitative observations that many of these towns appeared to be depressed. The ONS investigated the economic situation in 169 coastal towns in England and Wales, classifying each as being predominantly working, residential, or mixed, and as suffering low, mid, or high deprivation. 114 of the 169 towns were noted to suffer high deprivation. Along England’s east coast, 39 of 46 coastal towns fell into this category, and in north-west England, 16 of 21. The report concluded that more than 3.8m of the 5.4m people who live near the sea in England and Wales, live in towns suffering high deprivation.
The ONS measured how many people aged 16 to 64 are working, seeking work, and economically inactive; educational enrolment and attainment; life expectancy; mortality due to different diseases; the prevalence of diseases caused by alcohol; the rate of drug addiction; and crime rates. In many of the 114 badly deprived coastal towns, educational attainment, life expectancy and employment are typical of sub-Saharan Africa. Blackpool is a prime example.
Yes – many of these towns had seasonal economies that relied heavily on British day-trippers and holidaymakers, and were hit by package holidays. (According to the University of Google, the first all-inclusive, flying package holiday was sold in the UK in 1950, but it wasn’t until 1962 that the industry literally took off with high-capacity jetliners. These allowed companies to offer week-long Mediterranean holidays to working class customers, such as miners, steel workers, and people working on automotive production lines.
I found there was more pain. Containerisation of cargo soared during the 1970s and 80s, redirecting freight through a handful of suitably equipped ports. This slashed business at other harbours. The fishing industry shrank as dwindling stocks were protected. Travel was expedited by new transport interfaces, so that people who once overnighted at ferry ports, for example, no longer did so. Brexit forced the UK Government to build customs and related facilities at selected sites, (as for veterinary and food inspections), funnelling trade through major choke points, again hurting other harbours.
British MPs and the Govt were not blind, but the amounts spent to alleviate the problems in coastal towns, (several million £ up to £40 million), were nowhere near those required, and the spending was misdirected, merely treating symptoms. Some expenditure was palliative, since it did nothing to revive towns economically. For example, some towns boosted policing and healthcare, and spruced up roads and parks, without addressing the single root cause of cardiac and alcoholic diseases, drug-related illness, and crime: unemployment and consequent poverty.
Many British coastal towns are at the end of the road, literally and figuratively. You need to find a reason to be there. Retirement in a quiet place with nice views and pleasant walks is the only reason many people have. Pensioners are not to be scoffed at, but the jobs they create are in healthcare, housekeeping, hair dressing, and food sales: they do not drive businesses that can become the new beating hearts of local economies.
I have worked in several capacities, one being that of writing programs that run over the internet. Economists who claim IT is a promising new sector for depressed towns are mistaken. IT, electronics, and automation are replacing many staff in the service sector, such as till workers, warehouse employees, and laundromat operators. Software and clever machines are even eating into professional jobs in engineering, medical specialities, and accountancy. Companies that can afford to automate are doing so, reducing costs and increasing profit. Bigger profits provide the money and incentive for further, more expensive automation. This increases the gulf between poor and rich, which widens until the process limits the number of consumers who can afford products and services. IT and automation professionals who can work anywhere, do not live in depressed areas!
The situation in Britain has been hugely exacerbated by the stupidity of successive British governments and poor education. The Iraq War and intervention in Afghanistan cost the UK taxpayer anywhere from £25 to £40 bn, depending on whom you believe. The Iraq War destabilised the Middle East with terrible consequences. Online, I explained repeatedly and at length the many reasons why Brexit would be a disaster, while hoping I would be wrong if “Yes” won. Everything transpired as I had foreseen, and in truth it was all plain common sense. The fact that so many of the UK’s leading politicians – graduates of top schools and leading universities – were either too stupid to see what I had, (or horribly dishonest), spoke volumes.
Many coastal towns were badly hurt by Brexit, but there is also HS2. Here, I again exercised plain common sense and argued at length against the project, noting life-and-death problems that urgently demanded funding, such as the NHS crisis, overcrowded commuter services, and third world conditions in many British towns. As an experienced professional mechanical engineer, I knew HS2 was a vanity project that would boost land prices near its stations while uprooting many people elsewhere, and destroying land prices where it cut through farms and skirted buildings. The embedded greenhouse gas emissions are enormous: the equivalent of running diesel trains over the same distance for decades. HS2 will encourage many well-paid people to commute over much longer distances, i.e., it will not increase capacity in the required way. Allowing many people to live further from work does not increase productivity, and allowing people who currently work on trains to continue to do so, does not increase productivity. Many passengers will be day-trippers, tourists, or visiting relatives. The speed they travel at is irrelevant to the economy. HS2 cannot boost GDP measurably. Official reports that claim otherwise are hogwash.
HS2 is the third railway between London and Birmingham, while many towns elsewhere are denied a rail connection.
HS2 will inflict more damage. It will divert investment from towns far from the track, including coastal towns. HS2 trains are designed to run onwards to Manchester and Leeds without passengers switching trains. (A transfer would annoy our entitled passengers, and eat up the time advantage of high-speed rail.) However, without high-speed lines to The North, (which would be inordinately expensive and break the back of the Treasury camel), HS2 trains must travel at the same speeds as the current trains, with the same intervals between services. The snag is that at this speed and frequency, HS2 trains carry 17% fewer passengers than the current trains, (National Audit Office). HS2 will significantly reduce rail travel north of Birmingham, forcing many people to use more polluting means of travel.
Very large sums are required to turn around Britain’s depressed towns. Each town requires a genuine raison d’être. If you want to find out how much money is required to save a town, take a good hard look at the massive redevelopment of Charleroi in Belgium: airport, universities, government offices, shopping areas, and all. The £100 billion wasted on HS2 to favour Britain’s two largest cities, at the expense of everyone else, while uprooting families and inflicting massive environmental damage, could have been spent much more thoughtfully and wisely to give coastal towns a real second life, rather than symptomatic treatment. However, there were other issues too, such as the NHS. When Britain’s MPs voted to spend £100 billion on HS2, they voted to murder British citizens. (No, I do not exaggerate.)
As for the coastal towns and many other horribly depressed areas elsewhere, huge, multifaceted and properly integrated plans are required. Thanks to poor leadership, the UK can only afford to resurrect a handful of small coastal towns – villages, really. The outlook for the others is grim.