‘We need to speak collectively’: can parliament solve the problem of ‘deprivation bingo’ in the UK’s seaside towns?

Silock’s Fun Palace in Blackpool. Polly Billington believes a coastal communities minister is needed to effect change in coastal towns across the country. Photograph: Polly Braden/The Guardian

It is a lovely sunny autumn day in Ramsgate on Britain’s Kent coast, and quintessential seaside chippy Peter’s Fish Factory is doing a roaring lunchtime trade. Across the road, at the entrance to the town’s pier, local MP and chair of the newly reformed coastal parliamentary Labour party (PLP), Polly Billington, is having her photo taken.

In between shots she shows us the community art project that adorns the fence along the entrance to the pier. It is made up of pictures, drawn primarily by local children and young people, of the 65 little ships that set sail earlier this year from Ramsgate to commemorate the 85th anniversary of the Dunkirk evacuation.