Lowestoft is being treated unfairly when it comes to support from the Government, despite Kirkley being the 25th most deprived areas in the country.
Lowestoft is being treated unfairly when it comes to support from the Government, despite Kirkley being the 25th most deprived areas in the country.
Peter Aldous the Waveney MP, is calling for a level playing field in applying for regeneration cash.
He has told Parliament that Lowestoft should be treated on a par with neighbouring Great Yarmouth. Mr Aldous also said that there was a need for private landlords to play their role in coming forward with realistic rents and lease expectations that properly take into account current market conditions. He added that "We need to step off the unseemly not-so-merry-go-round whereby tenants, full of expectation, sign leases with the benefit of a rent-free period. When that ends, they find their businesses unable to sustain an unrealistically high rent." Peter Aldous also compared Suffolk's second largest town to that of its neighbour just to the north: "Lowestoft is remarkably similar in many ways to Great Yarmouth, 10 miles up the coast, with the same challenges and opportunities. Yet Yarmouth is in category 1 and is a priority place. I do not begrudge Great Yarmouth that; it is right that it should have those designations, but so should Lowestoft. Nelson ward in Yarmouth is the 39th most deprived nationally, but Kirkley in Lowestoft is the 25th. In Yarmouth 20% of children live in low-income families but 25.5% do in Lowestoft. In Yarmouth, 22.5% of the population have been diagnosed with a long-term, life-limiting illness or disability; in Lowestoft, that figure is 28%.
Meanwhile, according to a report by the country’s chief medical officer, Professor Chris Whitty our seaside tonwns hide some of the country’s poorest health outcomes, which leave many residents “old before their time,” Chris Whitty has called for a national strategy to address the disproportionately high concentrations of chronic disease, mental illness and poor life expectancy in some of England’s coastal destinations.
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