GUEST BLOG: Financial Exclusion in Big Local Areas

By Niamh Goggin (Small Change)

Just how bad is the problem of financial exclusion in Big Local Areas?  Are there many people who don’t have access to mainstream financial services and who are trapped in debt to high-interest predatory lenders?  If this is a problem that Big Local areas want and need to address, they need access to information on the scale, scope and location of the problem.  Back in 2007, I worked with Experian who were commissioned by the Financial Exclusion Taskforce to map the need for affordable credit from not-for-profit lenders and identify the areas where there is the greatest mismatch between the need for credit and its supply.  I had to drop out of the project for health reasons and lost track of what happened to the information produced.  By chance this week I came across the reports for each local council area, published by Transact, the national forum for financial inclusion.

Each Financial Inclusion Taskforce Report provides a map of the local authority area showing the wards, colour-coded to highlight their levels of financial exclusion and a listing of the wards, which ranks them in comparison to the 10,000 other wards in Britain.  The area I was particularly interested in is Barrow-in-Furness, because it contains one of the few Big Local areas that does not yet have a credit union.  Yet four of its wards are in the worst 10% for financial exclusion in the UK.  Thankfully, a group of local residents led by Rob Cairns is working on setting up a new credit union, which I hope will receive the support it deserves. If you are interested in supporting the Barrow & District Credit Union Study Group of finding out more. Please contact them care of The Nan Tait Centre, Abbey Rd, Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, LA14 1LG by telephone on 07729 412327, or you can email Rob Cairns (robcairns51@yahoo.com). You can also keep up to date via their website.

If you want to have a look at the Financial Inclusion Taskforce Report for your own area, it’s a little bit tedious but worth the hassle.  Go to the Transact website library page here, and click on Experian Reports in the list on the left hand side.  Then you need to click on from page to page until you find the report for the local authority you are interested in.  (The search facility does not seem to find named reports and the listings include some other Experian reports).

Transact also acts as a hub for financial inclusion news and information, providing a space for financial inclusion discussion and debate and facilitation of financial inclusion activities and programmes.  It is free to join.  You can also follow them on Twitter @Transact_Forum.

I should also mention Big Lottery’s new £31.7 million Improving Financial Confidence programme, which last week announced the projects it will support to help people become more confident in and more aware of how to take control of their finances. Click here for details.

This is a guest blog by Niamh Goggin, Director of Small Change. Niamh is working with Local Trust on Big Local.