Thursday briefing: Why young people fear ‘there's nothing here for us' in England's coastal towns

The Guardian

6 days ago

Good morning. A few weeks ago, 18-year-old Tamsin Jarman-Smith, born and raised in a small town just outside Blackpool, sat on a battered sofa at House of Wingz, a community youth organisation tucked down an alleyway a few streets from the beach, and explained what it felt like to be a young person growing up in a coastal town.
'I'm lucky because I found this passion for dancing and I come to this place, which has saved me I think, especially my creativity and hope for opportunities for myself, but lots of people my age feel like there is nothing here for them,' she said.
'Everyone just tells you that your town is crap and that the only good things about it is the tourist attractions but they're not even for the locals. There aren't many good jobs, the housing is bad, not many people can afford to leave. Lots of people just feel trapped.'
Research shows there are good reasons for them to feel this way.
Young people in seaside towns in England and Wales are markedly more likely to face deprivation, poor housing, lower educational attainment and fewer employment opportunities – and, in England, are almost three times as likely to struggle with an undiagnosed mental health illness as their peers inland.
This week the Guardian launched Against the Tide, a year-long reporting project aiming to explore why teenagers and young people in coastal towns and communities across the UK are so disproportionately worse off in so many areas of their lives.
For today's newsletter I talked to Avril Keating, professor of youth studies at UCL's Institute of Education, about the issues affecting young people in our coastal towns and what needs to change.
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In recent years the fate of coastal towns has emerged as one of Britain's most pressing social issues, one that successive governments have recognised but failed to address.
Formerly thriving towns now consistently dominate UK government deprivation statistics. Some researchers we talked to described a 'salt belt' of deprivation that speaks to a broader lack of resources and social and public infrastructure – conditions that corrode and limit opportunities and aspirations.
According to UCL's Avril Keating, young people in these communities – meaning 15- to 25-year-olds – are some of the most affected.
'These are young people who are trying to figure out how to become independent adults in places that tend to have very limited opportunities,' she said. 'They often feel that these towns have nothing to offer them and they have been left behind – and in many ways they are right.'
What are some of the biggest challenges for young people in coastal towns?
When asked why she thought young people in seaside towns were so markedly worse off than their peers inland, Keating said there was a combination of issues at play: crumbling public services; insufficient local transport infrastructure further isolating young people in 'end-of-the-line' towns; seasonal coastal economies providing temporary employment in the summer months but then nothing for the rest of the year; and generational unemployment and household poverty.
One youth policymaker in St Ives told Keating's researchers that the seasonal job opportunities for young people are 'like a glass ceiling – but it's made of ice-cream and chips and pastries. For many young people it's limiting.'
The lack of opportunities coupled with the physical decline of their towns and the stigma of being associated with deprived communities – feeling like, as one young person in Blackpool described, 'just this poor person living in a shithole' – leads many to believe that their only option is to leave.
'These are places where local people often feel a strong connection to their town, but what was surprising to see from our research was that so many young people felt that they had to move away to make something of themselves,' she said.
The 'brain drain' of young people from coastal communities not only leaches these towns of future entrepreneurs, business owners and skilled workers, but leaves the dilemma of 'what happens to those who want to leave, but can't', said Keating. 'It can create a feeling of being trapped, a sense of hopelessness, and this can lower pride and aspiration.'
Research has shown that young people in the most deprived coastal areas are suffering from worse mental health problems than those inland, have higher levels of self-harm and are more likely to die from drug poisoning.
What do young people themselves say they need?
Over the past few months, Guardian reporters (including myself) have begun to travel to coastal towns to talk to young people about their lives. Older teenagers in Southend-on-Sea talked about how hard it was to live in a town where the seafront was busy with tourists enjoying the beach, while shops on the high street were boarded up and all the youth clubs were closed. 'There is nothing here for us. The only good stuff is for the tourists. It's just not a place I'd want to raise a family,' said one.
Cohen, an 18-year-old in Grimsby, said he was happy living there but was struggling to find a way of building a life for himself. 'It's not easy to get jobs here,' he said. 'I've been looking for the past few months but I keep getting turned down. I recently applied for a job at a local holiday park, but was told it had already been filled.'
Yet we also met many young people who had found good reasons to stay, often through finding local community groups that allowed them to build their confidence and aspirations.
Lisa February, a 25-year-old from Grimsby, decided to stay when she found a local theatre group helping aspiring young artists across north-east Lincolnshire. 'I don't see a version of my life living somewhere else,' she said. 'I feel a responsibility to the place that has given me all these opportunities.'
What needs to change?
Keating said it was clear from her research that young people in English coastal towns – whether they tourist resorts or former fishing or shipbuilding communities – had 'almost universally been marginalised and ignored in both local and national debates and policies about the factors that shape their own lives'.
She said investment and public money was almost always directed to other groups – such as older people or young children – and that the shuttering of youth services and support programmes was a 'real scandal, considering the enormous challenges facing young people and the deprivation that many of them are facing'.
Keating said young people overwhelmingly needed to see that their lives were valued and be given something to do and a place to go. This meant urgent investment in youth services and subsidised travel, better education opportunities (her team's recent report cites Camborne as an example of where a new university has supported the retention of young people in the area), and – crucially – listening to young people about the future of their towns.
'We need stop ignoring them',' she said. 'It's a cliche to talk about young people as the future but if you're not investing in young lives in coastal communities you're shoring up bigger problems down the line. How can you expect anything to change for them or their communities?'
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