Sheerness cafe owner on his struggles amid cost of living crisis

Liane Winchester is a 41-year-old disabled mother living in Sheerness. She has six children between the ages of seven and 21, four of whom live at home.

Sheerness is a port town on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent, home to around 12,000 people. Although just an hour’s drive from central London, it is one of the most impoverished seaside resorts in England.

Liane has lived there for eight years now. She told Express.co.uk: “It’s got beautiful sunrises and beautiful sunsets.” Other than that, there was little to be cheerful about. “People think ‘Oh the seaside! It’s going to be nice, it’s going to be lovely! But the thing is, it’s neither,” she added.

Over 270 million visits to England’s coastal destinations are made each year – drawn by the promise of a 99 on the beach, a glitzy arcade or an overnight stay in a hotel brimming with nostalgia.

Tourists splash just under £14billion around these towns every summer, but the year-round reality for local residents is one of neglect. Up and down the country, the seaside has been left far behind by the interior.

READ MORE: ‘Second home owners and Airbnbs have pushed out of our seaside town’

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) recently published “indices of multiple deprivation” (IMD) for every neighbourhood in the country.

Compiling measures of income, employment, education and health – alongside 33 other metrics – IMD scores are perhaps the most complete way of assessing how difficult life is for a particular community.

Of the top ten most deprived small areas in England, nine are in Blackpool. A slither of the Lowestoft seafront, Clacton-on-Sea and nearby Jaywick in Essex are also among the most destitute.

Outside of London, the South East is the wealthiest region in the UK, yet every neighbourhood in Sheerness is in the most disadvantaged decile nationally.

Almost all of the poorest areas in the surrounding local authority of Swale, and the wider county of Kent, are in the town too. What’s going on?

Liane explained what life was like in Sheerness. She said: “I’ve seen with my own eyes people that are so desperate they steal food from Aldi. Not luxury items, not alcohol, literally food. They’re so desperate they’re stealing.”

Petty theft was not an uncommon occurrence before the cost-of-living crisis, she pointed out, but it has become significantly worse over the past year: “They even put security tags on the shopping baskets now to stop people running off with their shopping.”

The average total annual income for all neighbourhoods in Britain comes to just below £43,500, according to the ONS. In the centre of Sheerness, this falls to £29,900 – 31 percent lower.

Of the 32,845 small areas in England, this community’s IMD score is the 48th-worst. The consequences of this were plain to see.

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The Port of Sheerness is a driving force in the Isle of Sheppey economy. At over 1.5 million square metres in size, it is one of the largest foreign car importers in the country. The town centre and seafront, however, has long relied on tourism.

Liane said: “The high street has turned awful. Today, you’ve got about ten barber shops and ten kebab shops, and then odd shops scattered in between. I wouldn’t say that there was much to offer.”

“All the banks have shut down. They’ve even taken the cashpoints with them. I thought at the very least they’d leave a cashpoint in place, but no. And the ones you do find are all out of service.”

As for the pebbled beach itself, she said: “I took three of my children a couple of years ago to litter pick, to teach them about marine life and so on. Each child had to carry a bag of rubbish, and it took us only about 40 minutes to fill them up. And that was just on a small section of the beach.”

She added: “There’s like a dozen people, if that – I’ve never seen more than that at any one time. The water looks disgusting. I’ve seen tampons floating in from the sea.”

A Swale Borough Council spokesman said: “Sheerness has suffered from the loss of traditional industries over the years, from the closure of the naval dockyard in the Sixties to the loss of the steel mill in 2012. Tourism is an important feature of the local economy, but visitors to the Island tend to be drawn towards the caravan parks and open beaches further along the Sheppey coast.”

“How many times have I been to the beach and the arcades? I would say about 20 times in eight years,” Liane claimed. She added: “The arcades are full of unruly children that don’t have any parents with them. They’re quite abrupt, they’re quite abusive.”

Liane believes this has a lot to do with the town’s lack of opportunities for young people. She said: “There’s nothing for the kids to do. If you walk around Sheerness, from about 4:30pm onwards, you’ll see teems of kids just getting up to no good – causing havoc, causing mayhem, because there’s just nothing to do.”

Rates of access to higher education in the town were far below the national average at the latest census. Between 2009 and 2018, half of all coastal towns experienced a decline in employment, according to the ONS, compared to just 37 percent for non-coastal towns. Without options, being led astray is far too easy.

Last year, police in Sheerness recorded 175.6 crimes per 1,000 residents, according to CrimeRate – that’s almost double the 83.8 figure for England. Liane said: “I’ve seen so many police raids just in my street alone, drug raids and so on. Police are always in my road.”

The spokesman for Swale added: “The issues Sheerness faces have been recognised by the Government, and we have successfully bid for £20m from the Levelling Up Fund to deliver a scheme to improve health, education, leisure, and business opportunities in the town.

“This is a welcome investment in the town, but we are clear it is just the first step along the way to reviving the fortunes of Sheerness to benefit local people.”

A recent study by The Health Foundation, an independent charity, found people in the most deprived decile of local areas in terms of their IMD – such as Sheerness – generally lived shorter lives, and spent a larger proportion of their lives in poor health.

Their research showed that in England, life expectancy at birth for men living in the most deprived areas was 74.1 years – 9.4 years lower than the 83.5 for men in the least deprived areas. The difference for women was only slightly smaller at 7.7 years.

In 2021, in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, a report by England’s chief medical officer Professor Chris Whitty found coastal communities had some of the poorest health outcomes in the country – with disproportionately high rates of chronic diseases, heart conditions and mental illness – leaving many residents to become “old before their time”.

The report also found that standards of NHS care in such places were often poorer, with services more likely to be impacted by staff shortages. Seaside towns were found to have 15 percent fewer postgraduate medical trainees, 15 percent fewer consultants and seven percent fewer nurses per patient than the national average.

While speaking to Express.co.uk, Liane was in the middle of trying to schedule a hearing test in the local hospital for her ten-year-old daughter, who is also disabled. Her initial appointment was delayed due to the pandemic, and still hasn’t been rebooked. She has asked for a referral to a consultant eight times, to no avail.

Liane is qualified in health and social care, and is currently working on a BSc Honours degree in health and care management.

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