Riot Women district home to one of England’s poorest neighbourhoods for older people

The idyllic rural setting for the hit BBC One show Riot Women is home to one of the most deprived areas for older people in the country, our new analysis reveals.

Park ward in Halifax, Calderdale, is among 81 neighbourhoods across the country in which at least 90% of people aged 60 and above live on incomes so low they are unable to afford basic necessities, new government data reveals.

Riot Women, which depicts five women challenging expectations of ageing by forming a punk rock band, is set in the Calderdale market town of Hebden Bridge with a number of scenes for the show filmed in Halifax, less than ten miles away.

The Pennines location is among a huge increase of neighbourhoods where a minimum of 90% of people aged 60 or above are in income deprivation under new methodology recently published. Other locations include neighbourhoods in Birmingham, Sheffield, Liverpool and within the London districts of Tower Hamlets, Hackney and Haringey.

It reveals the scale of the problem to be significantly larger than previously detailed with a 20-fold increase in the number of neighbourhoods where more than nine in ten older people are in income deprivation - up from just four neighbourhoods in 2019 under a different methodology.

The new income deprivation measure for 2025 accounts for housing costs with the result that London is now home to half (41) of the 81 neighbourhoods across the country where at least nine in ten people aged 60 and over are income deprived.

The latest data also sees huge increases in income deprivation for some local areas since 2019. In one neighbourhood in Tower Hamlets, the proportion of people aged 60 or above living in income deprivation has increased from 23.6% to 97.4%. In another neighbourhood in Milton Keynes, income deprivation among older people has jumped from 10.6% to 79.5%.

The neighbourhood of Manor Park in Aldershot, Hampshire, has the highest proportion of older person income deprivation in the country with 99.8% of people aged 60 and over income deprived.

Dr Aideen Young, Senior Evidence Manager at the Centre for Ageing Better, said:

“We are in the midst of a significant societal change where our working lives are being extended but with little thought or discussion about whether this is sustainable.

“People are being frozen out of the labour market, largely because of ageism and ill-health, and into enforced retirement well before they can claim state pension. This is being reflected in high poverty rates among people in their early 60s. We cannot continue increasing the state pension age without ensuring there are suitable safeguards in place to ensure further changes do not push significant numbers of older people into poverty.

“We need to consider the levels of state pension and associated benefits to ensure they are sufficient to allow those who rely on them to afford the basic necessities for a dignified life.

“We need greater flexibility around access to benefits which better reflects the new reality where some people will need to work well beyond state pension age and where others will not be able to work ten or 15 years before state pension age.

“And we need a step change from employers, employment support and government to ensure that the importance and value of older workers is more universally recognised and steps are taken to help them flourish within a multigenerational workforce.”