Sheffield residents debate over table ranking best and worst areas

Two neighbourhoods within Sheffield are among the 200 most disadvantaged out of nearly 33,000 across England, with 22 in the country’s 1,000 worst off, according to government figures published last week.

Yet at the other end of the scale, 12 communities in the Steel City rank among the 1,000 least deprived, with one, in leafy Lodge Moor, in the bottom 100.

The city’s most deprived area and the 107th worst off in England, the table suggests, is a jagged parcel of land either side of Prince of Wales Road, which is home to just over 1,600 people and is officially labelled Sheffield 039A but is better known as part of the Manor estate.

The rankings take into account a raft of statistics, from education and employment to health and housing.

A number of Star readers have now taken to Facebook to have their say on the matter.

Gwen Dean posted: “Born on Manor (in) 1950, everybody was poor so nobody knew the word deprived in those days. My family still lives there, still working class, still respectable.”

Another reader added: “Interesting that in my job, I don’t get tips that often, but when I do it’s always from people who live in places like this.

“In my work, I have met some of the most genuine and kindest people you could meet in these so called deprived areas.”

Sue Dunling added: “I was born on Greenland Drive, moved in with my gran aged three on Fretson Road (in) 1955 – great community.”

David Walker posted: “Lived on the Manor for years. Met some great people, my brother still sees a lot of the old families that used to live there in the 90s.”

The English Indices of Deprivation, produced by the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government, ranks the 32,844 small areas across the country by giving each a combined score based on factors like, crime, employment and barriers to housing.

Middlesbrough, Liverpool, Knowsley, Kingston upon Hull and Manchester are the local authorities with the highest proportion of most-deprived neighbourhoods.

Sheffield is the 44th most deprived out of 151 ‘upper tier’ local authority districts across the country.

Within the city, it will perhaps come as little surprise that along with Lodge Moor, Ecclesall, Fulwood, Broomhill and Crookes and Crosspool all feature among Sheffield’s 10 least deprived neighbourhoods.