Academics confirm value of city’s suburban affluence

Leading figures in the city have long argued the case for taking in the more affluent suburbs around the city centre, but it is the first time their assertion has been backed up by an academic study.

Dr Michael Nolan, of the University of Hull’s business school, said Hull could potentially go down from 10th in the Government table that gauges levels of local authority deprivation to 68th, by using different units of measurement.

He said many cities had similar issues as Hull – but in its case its problems were exaggerated by the tight boundaries.

“Hull’s local authority area is much smaller than most other urban local authorities, making many of the traditional league tables an unfair test.,” he said.

“By expanding the current borders to increase its size and retaking the measurements of the league tables, it is possible Hull could improve its position by more than 50 places in the “indices of multiple deprivation” table, as well as potentially improving its education and health statistics.”

“It does reinforce expectations that have become engrained; the reality is a bit different from that,” added Dr Nolan.

“You can see Hull is really a normal kind of urban area in northern England.”

Other cities such as Leicester and Blackpool could also benefit from changes to how urban areas are defined.

However Dr Nolan stressed that he was not advocating formal administrative boundary changes that were bound to be contentious.

He said: “Formal boundary change is not necessary for the construction of new informative league tables to capture local economic performance.”

Hull-based telecoms firm KC, which sponsored the research, said the city’s reputation was important for attracting inward investment, as well as new and talented employees.