Last week, I had a particularly enjoyable and unusual day.  On a beautiful morning, I walked through Green Park, over The Mall and across St James Park – with amazing views of Buckingham Palace in one direction, and towards Horse Guards and Whitehall in the other (and London Eye in the background).  Heading towards the Almshouse Association Members Day (annual conference) at One Great George Street – a conference centre and headquarters of the Institution of Civil Engineers.

About 3pm, I left early to attend a Young Westminster Foundation event at the Houses of Parliament.  It’s a 5 minute walk across Parliament Square, past the Supreme Court and Westminster Abbey. The reception was to celebrate YWF work and their supporters, and was a great opportunity to meet Westminster’s two new(ish) Labour MPs – Rachel Blake and Georgia Gould.  Their staff offered attendees short tours, through Westminster Hall and St Stephen’s Hall to Central Lobby but we couldn’t go any further as there was a debate taking place in the House of Commons.  We also visited the Chapel of St Mary Undercroft, which is still used for worship.  I learnt it was once where suffragette Emily Davison hid on the night of the 1911 census so her residence was listed as the House of Commons.  

On reflection I realised, since stepping out of the tube, I’d spent the whole day within the Education charity’s geographic area of benefit (AOB).  The southern half of the City of Westminster is the centre of modern London, and it includes Charing Cross – the actual central point.  It includes key national landmarks (described above), and the West End – shopping, leisure and tourism areas of Oxford Street, Leicester and Trafalgar Squares, Chinatown, Soho and Covent Garden.  There are hugely wealthy areas of Mayfair, Knightsbridge and Belgravia but there are hidden pockets of severe deprivation.

We use IMD 2019 child poverty indicator IDACI, which shows 11 LSOAs (out of 47 covering our AOB) are in 20% least deprived nationally but 8 LSOAs are in the 20% most deprived!  Not surprisingly, these reflect the locations of social housing estates across Pimlico and Westminster plus the area around Victoria Station where hotels provide temporary accommodation.

In a place where there is such disparity, it means having a very nuanced understanding.  Our priority as a funder is to focus on where the need is greatest.  So we ignore the central wealthy areas and focus on the residential communities pushed to the periphery, and finding the little residential pockets.  We want to know the unique characteristics, needs and assets of our area so we can work collaboratively with local stakeholders to enable children and young people growing up there to fulfil their potential.  For me that means several approaches:

• Quantitively by using data sets to understand the population demographics
• Qualitatively by meeting regularly with local organisations and engaging with community events
• Geographically by walking/biking around the area

Which reminds me.  I want to arrange a walking tour for our Trustees before the end of summer – you can be sure it will be a very different route!