Shocking figures reveal how many children in mid Wales are living in 'absolute poverty'

At a joint meeting of all three Powys County Councils scrutiny committees on Thursday, councillors and lay committee members discussed the authority’s performance during the first quarter of 2024/2025 from April to the end of June.

They looked at the council’s Corporate and Strategic Equality Plan Scorecard which evaluates performance against its own expectations against three council objectives.

One measure contained in the document shows the number of children living in “absolute poverty” in the county is 4,868.

The measure had no target and was for monitoring purposes only.

Plaid Cymru’s Councillor Gary Mitchell said that the measure on child poverty is a “hugely worrying one,” and would be a difficult one to “set a target” for.

Councillor Mitchell said: “It really has to be a massive area of our focus.”

He pointed out the “vast” number of calls to Children’s Social Service were an outcome of families living in poverty.

Councillor Mitchell said: “What are we going to do about it is my blunt question.”

Head of children’s social services Sharon Powell said: “All services work together to try and reduce poverty, it’s a growing problem not only Powys but the whole UK as a whole.”

She believed the council should have a target to reduce child poverty, but work would need to be done to “consider” what it would be and how it could be scrutinised.

At the council, the education department take the lead on dealing with poverty.

Newly appointed head of school improvement and learning Anwen Orrells explained that the council has a strategy to lessen the impact of poverty on pupil outcomes and that this is a national priority.

This is because there is a known performance gap between pupils from less well-off homes and their classmates.

Ms Orrells said: “This priority is a golden thread throughout our work, so that every question we ask is how does it look for children on free school meals (FSM) what are you doing about it and how are you supporting the families as well.

Education portfolio holder Liberal Democrat Councillor Pete Roberts said that FSM were no longer “means tested” and are now universal for all children at primary school.

Councillor Roberts explained that work had been done to ensure that schools identify children that would qualify under the old FSM eligibility rules so they could be steered towards other learning grants.

Councillor Roberts said that the council had achieved a “reasonable level of success” in helping residents accessing funding and benefits they are entitled to.

This in turn would help the council receive more funding from the Welsh Government.

Council leader, Liberal Democrat Councillor James Gibson-Watt said: “Those figures are a stark deeply worrying, reminder of the need for action and the scale of the task in front of us.

“We know that levels of income in the county are low.

“The biggest thing we can do is to try and stimulate the economy and attract employers to come into the county and for those here to pay better salaries to their employees.”

At the meeting head of business intelligence and governance Catherine James had been asked to provide a definition of absolute poverty.

Ms James said: “It’s when you have an income of less than 60 per cent of the average for that area.”

According to the Office of National Statistics (ONS) figures the average salary in Powys for 2023 was £30,008 which means that the children would be living in households receiving less that £18,004 a year.

The report will go in front of the council’s Liberal Democrat/Labour Cabinet at a meeting next Tuesday, September 17.