Children 'trapped in poverty on estates'

The statistics — to be published next month as part of London’s Poverty Profile 2015 — highlight the uneven playing field faced by young people raised on housing estates like Angell Town in Brixton — where two-thirds of the units are social housing and the rest mostly privately rented — and which is the subject this week of a special Evening Standard investigation.

Of 680,000 children living in poverty in London, 270,000 — 40 per cent of the total — live in properties socially rented from local authorities or housing associations.

Hannah Aldridge, one of the authors of London’s Poverty Profile, which is funded by Trust for London, said the latest data revealed a new trend, namely that the “much higher rents in the private sector” meant that children of private renters were almost as likely to suffer poverty as children in social rented dwellings.

She added: “Whilst the poverty rate for children in social housing in London is the highest, the number of children in poverty living in private rented homes is almost as bad. It shows that the poverty base is spreading. Social renting no longer stands out as the unique poverty tenure in London.”