Middlesbrough Pushes Back After Report Names It Hardest Place in England to Grow Up

Residents, teachers and civic leaders in Middlesbrough have rejected the idea that their town is defined by hardship, after a new national report ranked it the most difficult place in England in which to be a child. Many acknowledged the challenges but said the label was unfair and unhelpful.

The report, The Childhood Lottery, was published this week by the children's commissioner, Rachel de Souza. She described childhood as being in "a state of emergency". It relied on what was called a "landmark dataset" combining 162 measures of children's lives, ranging from child poverty and exclusion rates to poor air quality. Middlesbrough came out at the bottom.

The Guardian visited the town this week to speak with children and professionals. At a lively youth club in the suburb of Coulby Newham, young people were making papier-mache Halloween decorations, cooking and playing table tennis, while others prepared for a game of dodge ball outside on an unusually mild October evening. Hannah, 15, whose name has been changed, said she loved living there, citing Albert Park, the Dorman Museum, football matches and her friends at the club. She added that she knew life was not the same for everyone. One boy was puzzled by the question of whether growing up there was hard. "I'm going to be here the rest of my life," he said. "Why would I leave?" A friend countered that Middlesbrough was too cold and scruffy and that he planned to move somewhere like Hawaii or Zanzibar.

Wayne Mason, a former soldier who is chief executive of Linx Youth Project, which runs the club, said the report attached "yet another label" to the town and its young people. He did not dispute the statistics but said the overriding feeling among young people was pride. "We always talk about deprivation and poverty and crime, but we don't talk about community," he said. His deputy, Eilís Sexton, said she worried about how the finding would affect young people hoping to start families. She said she had left the area for six months and hated it.

The report arrives weeks after a collision on the A66 in which a car carrying five young people hit a police car with two constables inside, killing everyone in both vehicles. Some media coverage portrayed Middlesbrough as an urban dystopia run by gangs, but residents said that did not match reality. Hannah said she had passed the scene and burst into tears.

The town's Labour mayor, Chris Cooke, said outsiders often tell Middlesbrough what it is. "We know what we are. There is another side," he said. Cooke grew up in a violent family, lost his father to suicide as a teenager, watched his mother's mental health decline, and ended up in care. He said that being told his life was hard or that his hometown would hold him back would not have helped. He recalled being advised to leave his TS6 postcode off apprenticeship applications, and instead made it bigger. He credited foster carers and others around him for his progress.

Middlesbrough is one of 16 English councils spending more than 80% of core funding on social care. Cooke said he was passionate about youth services, including a fund to ensure every postcode in the town has a youth club.

At Newport primary school, headteacher Patricia Maxwell said the report told her nothing she did not already know, but did not capture the positives in her pupils' lives. The school has a well-used library, and reading for pleasure in Middlesbrough is well above the national average. Deputy head Stacey Carlisle said the findings suggested children were living "really quite unhappy lives", which she said was not the case. "They're joyous and joyful, our children," she said, adding that challenges at home exist in affluent areas too.

Both teachers said they would not want to work anywhere else. Maxwell said she wanted pupils to reach their full potential, but not to feel labelled. "Just because you're living in a challenging environment does not mean that that defines you," she said.