Manchester leads UK in reducing inner-city deprivation, report finds

Manchester has recorded the biggest fall in inner-city deprivation in Britain, according to a report, as Andy Burnham stakes a claim that he could replicate the city’s revival nationwide.

As the frontrunner to replace Keir Starmer, the Greater Manchester mayor has placed the city’s economic performance at the heart of his campaign, describing “Manchesterism” as a political philosophy for a more interventionist approach to the economy.

As Burnham prepares to fight the Makerfield byelection before an expected leadership challenge against Starmer, the Centre for Cities report said Manchester had made an outsized contribution to falling levels of inner-city deprivation nationwide since 2010.

Between 2010 and 2025, Manchester recorded a 17-percentage-point fall in deprivation rates for the neighbourhoods within close proximity to its city centre, the largest fall of 63 UK towns and cities analysed by the thinktank.

In analysis using the indices of multiple deprivation for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland – benchmarks compiled using data for employment, education, health, crime and other metrics – it found that London and Liverpool had also made significant contributions.

For the country at large, the share of inner-city neighbourhoods in the 20% most deprived places in a combined index for all four nations had fallen by seven percentage points, from 38% to 31%.

It said the definition “inner city” included all the neighbourhoods immediately adjacent to a place’s centre. For the biggest cities in the report, such as Manchester, this was set by plotting a ring 1.3km from the centre to 4.5km out, where urban neighbourhoods give way to the suburbs.

For inner-city Manchester, 58.4% of neighbourhoods in and around the city centre ranked among the most deprived in 2025, down from 75.7% in 2010.

In the Makerfield byelection, Burnham is standing in one of the furthest Greater Manchester constituencies from the city centre, on the western fringes of the combined authority in the borough of Wigan.

According to the Centre for Cities, deprivation rates rose in some parts of urban Britain. Seven out of the 10 cities and towns with the largest increases in deprivation rates across their whole urban area were in the north and Midlands – including Derby and Sunderland.

Andrew Carter, the thinktank’s chief executive, said the government needed to “back metro mayors” because the report showed big cities with devolved powers had outperformed smaller cities and towns.

He said: “Government needs to continue to back mayors to deliver and ensure their plans for fiscal devolution reward metro mayors for the steps they take to boost local growth.”