Ribble Valley vs Blackpool: 15 miles apart, different planets

Fifteen miles. Two realities.

Metric	Ribble Valley	Blackpool
Asylum support	31	577
Rate per 10K	4.7	40.0
Crime per 1,000	32.4	142.8
ASC spend/capita	£442	£724
WBI (Census 2021)	94.1%	90.4%

Ribble Valley. Rural Lancashire. 61,000 people. Affluent. Low crime. Low deprivation. 31 people on asylum support. Rate of 4.7 per 10,000.

Blackpool. Coastal Lancashire. 141,000 people. Most deprived LA in England. Highest crime rate in our tracking set. 577 on asylum support. Rate of 40.0.

Both are in Lancashire. Both fall under the Serco prime provider contract for the North West. The same company decides placement for both areas. It chooses Blackpool.

The dispersal system is supposed to share the load. It does the opposite. It concentrates asylum seekers in cheap-housing areas and leaves affluent areas untouched. Ribble Valley carries 8.5 times less load per head than Blackpool.

Source: Home Office local authority asylum data (Dec 2025). ONS crime statistics. NHS Digital ASC data.