Leeds sees one of biggest rises in child poverty in Yorkshire

The End Child Poverty coalition, which commissioned the report showing almost a third of children across the UK live below the breadline, said families were already on a “cliff edge” before the coronavirus pandemic.

The research combined recent figures from the Department for Work and Pensions with local housing costs to produce new estimates for low-income families – those earning less than 60 per cent of the median income.

The analysis shows 33.2 per cent of children aged 16 and under in Leeds were living in families with low-incomes in 2018-19 – compared to 29.3 per cent in 2014-15. This is one of the biggest rises in Yorkshire and The Humber.

In Leeds, the number of children in low-income families rose from 41,979 in 2014-15, to 50,727 last year.

The coalition is calling on the government to recognise the scale of the problem and its impact on children’s lives.

Chairman Anna Feuchtwang said: “The children affected are on a cliff edge, and the pandemic will only sweep them further into danger. An ambitious plan to put this shameful situation right would be transformational for millions of children.”

ECP is calling on the government to uprate housing assistance in line with inflation, abandon planned cuts to Universal Credit, end the benefit cap and the two-child limit, and increase child benefit.

A DWP spokesman said: “Making sure every child gets the best start in life is central to our efforts to level up opportunity across the country. We have already taken significant steps to do this by raising the living wage, ending the benefit freeze and injecting more than £9.3 billion into the welfare system.”