Living standards in Bradford remain stubbornly poor
A new report once again confirms Bradford's place as one of the most deprived places in the country ...
Speaking in 1987, the then Labour MP for Bradford West, Max Madden, noted that “by any yardstick, Bradford is revealed as a city of past prosperity and present poverty. Deprivation and disadvantage are acute and, in many ways, are becoming more serious”.
In the 39 years that have passed since these words were first spoken, a four decade era that has seen many different governments, councils and crises come and go from Westminster to City Hall, Bradford’s fortunes have remained largely unchanged. The city, as a new report reveals, continues to be one of the poorest in the UK.
This is despite the fact that today it has an economy worth between £8.7 billion to £11.6 billion – the third biggest in Yorkshire and one of the biggest in England. Simply put, the money generated here has never meaningfully made its way into the pockets of locals – not then and not now. The city, it seems, is as hopelessly adrift as ever. And no-one seems to know how to fix it.
Something is amiss. The Centre for Cities, for instance, has ideas on how to raise living standards to get more people out of poverty, which it outlines (again) in its 2026 Outlook. That they’re not necessarily new or radical is revealing about the fundamental failures in leadership both nationally and locally to effectively address this ongoing issue, which has worsened, as the Joseph Rowntree Foundation recently explained.
“The deeper you go, the further away from the poverty line you look, the worse things are,” the charity said. “In 2023/24, 6.8 million people – or almost half of those in poverty – were in very deep poverty, with an income far below the standard poverty line, meaning their incomes are at most two thirds of the poverty line. This is both the highest absolute number of people, and the highest proportion, on record, going back to 1994/95.”
Those ideas being mooted by Centre for Cities include developing a more productive business base by growing the number of innovative knowledge-based businesses, boosting the number of better-skilled people in the labour market – with improved transport links a critical aspect to this – and getting rid of constraints around housing and commercial space to reduce high costs.
The responsibility for actioning these, the thinktank argues, are metro mayors heading up combined/strategic authorities with more and better devolved powers. Again, this isn’t radical. Devolution has long been seen as being critical for local (and national).
The problem has been whether they’ve ever had the right tools, money and capabilities to deliver impactful change – and sans mayors, for they are a relatively recent invention, local authority executives. The English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill, which is currently at committee stage in the House of Lords, is looking to address this.
The answer is no, they haven’t – but that alone doesn’t explain the persistence of poverty. Politics has also failed at every level. After all, it has been five years since West Yorkshire got its first mayor and living standards in Bradford in that half decade don’t appear to have materially changed for the better.
For example, as of 2025, Bradford is ranked as the fourth most income deprived, fifth most employment deprived and twelfth most deprived local authority in England. In 2019, when the indices of deprivation were last updated, Bradford was the thirteenth most deprived local authority. In 2015, it was ranked nineteenth. One is the most deprived. Two hundred and ninety six is the least deprived.