It is a league table that no one wants to top. For the first time in 20 years, Blackpool, a once-glamorous seaside resort, this week overtook Glasgow to have the lowest average male life expectancy in the UK.
Men born in Blackpool will now live until just after their 73rd birthday on average, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS) study, six years less than the average in the rest of England.
The figures highlighted an uncomfortable truism about modern life in Britain: wealth brings health and poverty kills, in what the ONS called a “clear” north-south divide.
Those born in the wealthy Hampshire district of Hart tend to live a full decade longer than those in the poorest areas, while men born in the south-east of England will live three years longer on average than those in the north-east.
The gap between the richest and poorest areas has widened since the Covid pandemic. Blackpool’s average life expectancy for men is now 18 months lower than in 2019.
The roots of Blackpool’s ill health can be traced back to its golden era more than a century ago.
The tourist boom of the early 20th century left behind an oversupply of guesthouses, as Britons swapped a week on the British seaside for guaranteed sun on the Costa del Sol.
As the holidaymakers moved out, property speculators moved in, snapping up ageing Edwardian properties to turn them into houses in multiple occupation (HMOs), where landlords make a profit of up to 20%, four times the average UK rental yield.
As a result, Blackpool now has some of the cheapest and most squalid housing in the UK, attracting renters in poor health. A one-bedroom flat within sight of the well-known Big Dipper rollercoaster costs a little over £100 a week, less than half the average for the UK.
Dr Arif Rajpura is charged with curing some of the town’s malaise. Rajpura, Blackpool council’s director of public health, knows that the town’s mortality rate among those under 75 is by some distance the worst in England for cancer, cardiovascular disease and for all causes.
Describing his public health team as a “paid nuisance”, he says whenever there is a planning application for another fast-food shop or pub, they object to it.
Similarly, he opposed Blackpool football club when it made a betting company its main front-of-shirt sponsor in 2018 and pushed back on a confectionery company sponsoring children’s activities.
Dr Andy Knox, a GP who leads on population health for the NHS in Lancashire and south Cumbria, said only “full systemic change” in how Britain approached public health would curb the widening inequality.
He called for an overhaul of how councils are funded, greater integration of the NHS and local authorities and bold national policies such as a sugar tax.
Knox, the author of Sick Society, a book about Britain’s health inequality, warned against “pointing the finger” at those on long-term sickness benefits or abusing alcohol or drugs.
“This is not about lifestyle choice,” he said. “The reasons why people get into unhealthy lifestyle behaviours are often massively complex and can be hugely linked to childhood trauma.”
Blackpool has the country’s highest proportion of children in care, nearly three times the national average.
“They get a terrible start in life, often through the care sector. They get really terrible dental care, so nutrition is really poor. They live in significant poverty: 70 to 80% live in the poorest fifth of the country,” said Knox.
“You have all of that multi-layered complexity coming into poor educational outcomes, then real levels of high unemployment … so the problem goes on.”
A recent council report revealed that Blackpool had four times the average number of drug deaths, nearly double the rate of smoking deaths, the highest proportion of alcohol deaths and the highest rate of serious mental illnesses in England.
Public health experts know that tackling ill health “upstream” – before problems such as high blood pressure become fatal – is the best way to cure chronic problems. However, crucial long-term preventive measures were cut as part of the former chancellor George Osborne’s austerity measures, a report to Blackpool council said this year.
The town lost out more than many wealthier areas, having about a third of its grant funding from central government cut in that time, compared with 15% for the richest boroughs.
In real terms, Blackpool has about £1,400 less per person to spend on its population than it did over a decade ago, while its public health grant has been cut by £10 per person since 2013.
Karen Smith, Blackpool council’s director of health and care integration, said the town needed to “drag ourselves away from focusing solely on the everyday pressures” and help people much earlier in their lives. But she added: “When the whole world feels like it’s on fire, I think that’s a difficult thing to do.”
