Inventing our future Collective action for a sustainable economy

Regional Social Strategy – the strategy to achieve social inclusion throughout the East of England
2.3 – SO7: To improve access to services, especially for disadvantaged groups
Access to services is influenced by physical, financial, cultural and language factors. These potential barriers
to social inclusion can also be exacerbated by poor confidence and trust in service provision, inappropriate
forms of service delivery and discrimination by service providers.
In rural areas, social exclusion can be disproportionately influenced by access to services, as even the most
basic of community services such as grocery shops, banks and doctors’ surgeries may be difficult to reach.
The loss of local facilities like these from small towns and villages impacts on social exclusion where people
are unable to travel, or find it difficult to travel to access services further afield.
Lack of services also impacts on feelings of community vibrancy and cohesion. Rural households in the East
of England have poorer geographical availability of key services compared to the average for rural England.
Data provided by the Countryside Agency, now part of Natural England, shows that the East of England has
the smallest proportion of households living within a set distance of 9 out of 11 key services, in particular:
• banks and building societies (65.1% of rural households live within 4 km)
• dental surgeries (74.7% of rural households live within 4km)
• hospitals (only 16.7% of rural households live within 4 km).
i) Financial services
Financial exclusion and spiralling debt are growing problems for low-income households. Costs can be higher
for people without access to mainstream financial services as, for example, utility companies often charge
lower prices if bills are paid by direct debit. Likewise those least likely to have household insurance are
the most likely to be burgled, and may also find it more difficult to deal with the financial loss.
Nationally,
• 1 in 6 of the poorest households still do not have any type of bank account
• lone parents are three times as likely to have no account as the average household
• Bangladeshi and Pakistani households are twice as likely as the average household to have
no bank account
• half of the poorest households are uninsured.
(Monitoring Poverty & Social Exclusion, Palmer et al, York, New Policy Institute and JRF, 2003).
ii) Information and advice services
Lack of effective information, representation and advice can preserve and extend inequality and
disadvantage, increasing the risk of exclusion by denying access to services such as health, housing
and training. This in turn has a negative impact on employment prospects, quality of life and community
cohesion in general.
Language barriers too present particular problems for migrant workers and refugees, for example when
seeking work or trying to understand the benefits system. Failure to provide information in the appropriate
format combined with the lack of interpreters can reinforce rather than reduce social exclusion.
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