Welcome to Brighton and Hove - the city of renters

The city ranks third out of the UK’s 63 largest cities and towns for having the most people in rented accommodation, behind only Oxford and Cambridge and higher than London.

And a growing gap between wages and house prices is putting home ownership further and further out of reach.

The figures have been released in a major statistical report by the Centre for Cities, an independent research and advisory organisation set up in 2005.

Between 2012 and 2015, average weekly wages in Brighton and Hove rose five per cent from £444 to £469. But the effects of inflation over that period means workers are marginally worse off.

According to the Bank of England’s online inflation calculator, 2015 wages would have to have averaged £473.25 to have retained the purchasing power of 2012’s pay.

Over the same period, house prices in the city have increased 23.6 per cent, from £275,000 to 339,800.

The rental figures are taken from the Office of National Statistics’ (ONS) 2011 census data and show the “proportion of households renting privately or living rent-free” in the city climbed 33 per cent over 10 years to 27.55 per cent.

Elsewhere in the South East, Basildon found itself at the bottom of the same table, with only 11 per cent in rented accommodation.

Other figures unearthed by the report show Brighton has the highest percentage of people working from home and the second-highest access to super-fast broadband.

The report also showed that CO2 emissions per capita in Brighton and Hove were among the lowest nationwide as was the city’s percentage of young people.

The Cities Outlook report from the Centre for Cities claims to be the authoritative annual economic index of the UK’s largest 63 cities and towns.

The survey allows comparison of cities and towns across 45 metrics, including population size, house prices, employment rates, demographics, business growth and welfare expenditure.

The study brings together census data from 2011 with the latest 2015 analyses from across government departments including Work and Pensions, Education and the Office of National statistics.

And it incorporates previous years’ statistics to allow analysis of trends over time.

Commenting on the findings of Cities Outlook 2016, Alexandra Jones, chief executive of Centre for Cities, focused on the need for a local solution to local issues.

She said: “Further devolution would also enable local leaders to make spending decisions which better meet the needs of their communities and give them more incentives to drive economic growth.”

To examine the data for yourself, go to centreforcities.org/data-tool/.

FORGET COMMUTING, IT’S PERFECT PLACE TO WORK FROM HOME

Maunie Catcheside Maunie Catcheside

OF THE 45 statistics measured, Brighton ranks top in just one: the percentage of its population who work from home.

Maunie Catcheside is one of the 12.03 per cent of Brighton and Hove residents – more than in any other city – who has chosen to abandon the daily commute and the tyranny of the nine-to-five.

After a lengthy career in London, the Hove-based PR executive decided to abandon hours of travelling every day in favour of starting up her own business from home.

She said Brighton was the perfect location for her business model: “The commute was a big factor in my decision, I think there just comes a time when you want a better work life balance.

“The commute was taking up to five hours a day some days and there’s only a certain amount of time you can carry on at that level.

Working from home allows Maunie to enjoy the city she loves and work to her own timetable.

She said: “The advantages of working from home are it’s very flexible, which is great when you’re in Brighton.

“I’m an early riser so I like to get up early and clear my emails,and then I can go for a walk along the seafront or go to the gym and maybe come back and carry on later.

“You’re away from the nine to five.”

She said that Brighton’s core industries, allied to the high prevalence of super-fast broadband, was another reason so many people choose to stay away from the office.

“I know Brighton and Hove is one of the top places for start-ups, and self-employment and that’s one reason: it makes it more financially viable if you don’t have to rent a place.

“The other thing is, Brighton attracts a certain kind of industry: creative industries, digital services, IT, and you can do all of that from home.”

Brighton and Hove came within a hair's breadth of topping another poll in the Centre for Cities report – only in Luton do more people have access to super-fast broadband.

Maunie said the internet speeds were another enabler for her business, Brighton and Hove PR.

She said: “You would think it would be easy to work online while commuting but ironically for large sections of my commute I didn’t have any signal.

“So being in Brighton has extended my day and now with smartphones it’s not just a question of working fast from home but also when you’re out and about.

“Being a sole trader, I haven’t got a team to delegate to, I’ve got to be accessible to respond to things quickly and if I’m in a meeting I can respond straight away.

“There’s no one back at the office keeping an eye on things so I think it’s key that as soon as something comes in via email, or there’s a video or a presentation to download and view, I can do that and respond immediately.”

Maunie said working from home was rewarding but warned it was not for the easily distracted: “I think you have to have a certain personality. You have got to be disciplined. If you wanted, you could sit in your PJs all day and watch daytime television - it’s tempting - so you’ve got to set goals."

“I always try to arrange meetings off-site with clients, so I get out and network.”

YOUNGEST

Brighton’s young people make up a surprisingly small percentage of the city’s population.

Only five places have a smaller number of under-twenties than Brighton’s 21.8 per cent: Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Bournemouth, Norwich and Cambridge.

The figure, from the 2011 census data, is almost unchanged from the official figure from 10 years earlier, 21.7 per cent.

Meanwhile the national average fell five per cent in that period from 25.5 to 24.3 as the average age of the population has continued to increase as a result of declining birth rates.

BROADBAND

Brighton has the second-fastest broadband in the country.

Of the 63 cities and large towns included in the analysis, only in Luton do a slightly larger percentage of the population enjoy access to superfast broadband.

Here, 87.4 per cent have superfast broadband while at the other end of the table, only 60 per cent of the people of Barnsley have such speedy internet connections.

The analysis is made up of a postcode-level report conducted by Ofcom last year, called “Connected Nations.”

The Centre for Cities advises that: “Due to variations in broadband performance over time, the data should not be regarded as a definitive and fixed view of the UK’s fixed broadband infrastructure.

However, the information provided may be useful in identifying variations in broadband performance by geography and the impact of super-fast broadband on overall broadband performance.”

There is no previous data to compare with on these statistics.

HOUSEHOLD AFFORDABILITY

Brighton’s average weekly earnings in 2015 - of £469.30 per week - were comfortably mid-table between London at £674 and Huddersfield at £398.

Combined with the city’s high house prices, that makes the average home more unaffordable in Brighton than almost anywhere else in the country.

The Centre for Cities compared average house prices with the average wage paid to a worker in a year.

On that basis, Brighton scores 12.6 on their “housing affordability index”, fourth behind only Oxford, London and Cambridge.

Home ownership is getting further and further out of reach for many: that figure has increased in each of the last three years.

CO2

EMISSIONS of carbon dioxide per capita are lower in Brighton than almost anywhere else.

In 2013, the latest data released by the Centre for Cities research team, CO2 output was 4.3 tonnes per capita, fifth-lowest behind Chatham, Ipswich, Luton and Southend.

That represents a 22 per cent fall over 2005.

Two manufacturing centres - Middlesbrough and Swansea - produce outlying results at the top of the table of over 25 tonnes per person in each case.

But even comparable cities like Milton Keynes and Crawley are more polluting than Brighton, producing around six and a half tonnes per person.

Brighton’s result is part of a general trend locally and nationally of emissions falling year-on-year.

The data was calculated by comparing Department of Energy and Climate Change figures on emissions with Office for National Statistics data on population size.

HOUSE PRICES

House prices locally have shot up 84 per cent over 12 years, to rank fifth-highest in the country.

Only London, Cambridge, Oxford and Reading have a higher average house price than Brighton, where the mean price for a home in 2015 was £339,862.

Values have increased 6.1 per cent in just twelve months, and 84 per cent since the centre’s first analysis in 2003.

You could buy three and a half average houses in Barnsley - where the average value is under £100,000 - for the price of a house in Brighton and Hove.

But your local abode could only get you to two-thirds of the average London house, where prices average out at more than £530,000.

RENTAL PERCENTAGES

Brighton is a city of renters: the city is third out of 63 ranked by “proportion of households renting privately or living rent-free,” according to the latest census data.

In 2011 27.6 per cent of the population were renters, beaten only by Cambridge’s 27,8 per cent and Oxford’s 30.1 per cent.

At the other end of the scale, only 11 per cent of Basildon’s household are private renters.

Nationally renting has increased dramatically over the ten years since the previous census, up 60 per cent from 11.6 per cent to 18.6 per cent .

In Brighton the rise has only been half that rate, up 33 per cent from 20.7 per cent in 2001.

Meanwhile home ownership in the city fell over the same period, from 64.7 per cent to 57.8 per cent.

WORK FROM HOME

MORE people work from home in Brighton than in any other city in the country.

More than 12 per cent of the city’s Brighton residents work from home, according to the 2011 census which is the latest available data.

That is more than twice the 5.1 per cent who do so in the city at the bottom of the table: Hull.

When compared with previous data, taken at the 2001 census, Brighton’s home-based working population has climbed more than 30 per cent, against a national increase of 12 per cent.

QUALIFICATIONS

Brighton has come up through the ranks to be ranked second for workforce qualifications.

Only in Exeter does a smaller percentage of the working age population have no formal qualifications.

In Brighton in 2014 (the latest year available) only 3.3 per cent of those of working age lack any academic or trade qualifications, a figure which has plummeted from 12.3 per cent in 2005.

That is a 73 per cent fall in the unqualified population quotient in nine years.

Nationally, qualifications have also been improving but Brighton’s 73 per cent drop in unqualified workforce compares favourably to the national average of 40 per cent.

The Department for Trade and Investment data on qualifications was compared with Office for National Statistics population statistics to come up with the figures.