High-end bikes and overcrowded homes: where poverty hides in Oxford

A new way of identifying areas of deprivation in otherwise affluent areas has caught the attention of local politicians

Most of the 1,700 people who live in a wedge of housing between Iffley Road and Cowley Road in Oxford enjoy relative comfort. There are smart cafes, attic conversions and shops selling high-end bicycles to students and academics attending the world-famous university just over Magdalen Bridge.

In the bald terms of the official 1-10 index of multiple deprivation, it scores a six when the most deprived areas of the country score one. But combing through the 2021 census among the people in this neighbourhood, the new ethnic group deprivation index (EGDI) reveals an otherwise hidden cluster of people who experience significant economic hardship.