Indices of Deprivation
The Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government released the 2025 Indices of Deprivation (IoD) on 30 October 2025, following the previous release in 2019. The latest IoD evaluates relative deprivation across 33,755 Lower-layer Super Output Areas (LSOAs) in England. These area-level scores are averaged to generate deprivation scores for both upper and lower tier Local Authorities (LAs) along with wards. The resulting averages are then ranked, with rank one representing the most deprived area in England.
The Indices provide a set of relative measures of deprivation for small across England, based on seven different domains, or facets, of deprivation:
Income Deprivation / Employment Deprivation / Education, Skills and Training Deprivation / Health Deprivation and Disability / Crime / Barriers to Housing and Services / Living Environment Deprivation. Combining information from the seven domains produces an overall relative measure of deprivation, the Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD). In addition to the seven domain-level indices above, there are two supplementary indices: the Income Deprivation Affecting Children Index (IDACI) and the Income Deprivation Affecting Older People Index (IDAOPI). These are created as subsets from the Income Deprivation domain.
It is important to note that changes have been made to the methodology used to calculate the scores, which may affect direct comparisons between the 2019 and 2025 results. The most recent statistical release published by the Ministry states: ‘New datasets, methodologies and geographies have been used to produce the IoD25, meaning outputs are less directly comparable to previous Indices.’
The IoD 2025 saw the number of indicators used increased to 55, up from 39 in 2019. This expansion includes 20 newly introduced indicators, 14 that have been significantly revised, and 3 that have been reclassified into different domains. Additionally, 21 existing indicators have been updated to more recent timepoints.
The results for Sefton can be seen below: