Introduction: Inequalities in Gateshead

Making Gateshead a place where everyone thrives, is driving the major policy directions for Gateshead Council, aiming to redress the imbalance of inequality, championing fairness and social justice. Poverty and health inequalities are placing an increasing demand on our services, so we need more than ever to focus our work and the money we have to spend on what matters most. Gateshead Council have committed to five pledges to help and guide us when we make decisions. 

We know that over half of people and families in Gateshead are either just managing or just coping, but more than 30% are in need or in vulnerable situations. We want to change those statistics and aim to make Gateshead a place where there are less people in need of council support and more people are thriving. We are working differently, with partners and others, to achieve the right outcome for those people and families who require more support. 

Our strategic approach: To make Gateshead a place where everyone thrives, underpins our revised Health and Wellbeing Strategy: 'Good jobs, homes, health and friends', which is based on the key Marmot principles:

• giving every child the best start in life
• enabling all people to maximise their capabilities and have control over their lives
• ensuring a healthy standard of living for all
• creating fair employment and good work for all
• creating and developing healthy and sustainable places and communities.
• strengthen the role and impact of ill health prevention

The diagram below demonstrates the complexity of the issues which cause ill-health and allow inequalities to develop. It shows the different factors that impact our health, where they originate, and how they interact, multiply, and reinforce each other. At the centre of this are people and the communities in which they live. When viewed this way we can see that acting on single factors in isolation is likely to provide only a partial and incomplete response. Rather than acting on individual issues we recognise the need for a place-based approach. 

Our Health and Wellbeing Strategy recognises that to deliver improvements at a population level we will need comprehensive action across the whole system of community, civic, and service interventions. We accept that approaches which are multifaceted and complementary are more likely to be successful in reducing inequalities and helping people in Gateshead thrive.

We will develop methods which consider and address this complexity as a whole system. The Population Intervention Triangle8 below illustrates how the different elements required for a joined-up approach fit together:

• Civic led interventions refer to a wide range of functions, across a range of public sector organisations, such as planning, broadband, water, housing, road infrastructure and schools
• Service-based interventions refer to the range of public services, for example the NHS
• Community centred interventions recognise the vital contribution that the community themselves make to health and wellbeing

While each element makes an important contribution, when isolated from each other the impact is not as great as it could be. No one part is more important than any other, but the ambition must be to effectively combine these parts into a coordinated, multifaceted whole through place-based planning. 

This report will examine some of the progress and lessons learnt in tackling inequalities in the last 3 years and consider our current position. Finally, we will briefly discuss the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic and inequalities. 

Section 2: Economic inequality in Gateshead