London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Thursday, Oct 30, 2025

Conditions that led to 2011 riots still exist today, experts warn

Conditions that led to 2011 riots still exist today, experts warn

Data analysis finds large-scale cuts to youth services and increase in racial disparity 10 years on

The conditions that led to riots across England 10 years ago still exist today, experts have warned, as data analysis showed significant cuts to youth services in affected areas and an increase in racial disparity in stop and search.

On 4 August 2011, police officers shot and killed Mark Duggan, a 29-year-old mixed-race man, in Tottenham, north London. His death sparked a wave of civil unrest that started the capital and spread to other cities, causing property damage to the value of £40m a day.

The Guardian analysed data around youth services, stop and search and deprivation in the areas most affected to see how things have changed since then. The analysis centres on the five areas where 49% of crimes took place – Haringey, Croydon, Southwark, Birmingham and Manchester.

Council services for young people have been cut significantly since 2010-11, at the beginning of the coalition government’s austerity programme, according to data analysed by YMCA England & Wales and shared exclusively with the Guardian.

Between then and 2019-20, the national budget for youth services was cut by £372m when adjusted for inflation, down 73%. Some of the areas affected by the riots have experienced even steeper cuts. In Haringey, where the riots originated, the youth services budget fell from £5.6m to just £970,000 – a cut of 85% when taking inflation into account.

Aika Stephenson, the legal director of the youth advocacy charity Just for Kids Law, said the cuts to social services had been “unrelenting”, affecting “almost every aspect that directly affects young people so, if anything, the situation is worse”.

Of the five areas analysed, Southwark lost 82% of its youth budget over this period, Birmingham’s decreased by 80% and Croydon lost 79%. Manchester’s decrease was in line with the national average.

The Guardian’s groundbreaking contemporary Reading the Riots project interviewed 270 people who were involved in the 2011 disturbances. Of those, 85% said policing was an important contributory factor. Nearly three-quarters of interviewees said they had been stopped and searched in the previous 12 months.

Ten years on, the most recent figures show that while stop and search numbers have declined overall, black people are still far more likely to be targeted by police than white people.

In the aftermath of the riots, Theresa May, then the home secretary, announced a national review of stop and search and the use of the tactic by police in England and Wales fell significantly.


However, in recent years that figure has been rising again and the government announced this week that it was considering permanently relaxing restrictions on section 60, which does not require a police officer to have a reasonable suspicion of crime before searching someone.

A Home Office spokesperson defended this position: “Every weapon seized is a potential life saved. Stop and search helped remove 11,000 dangerous weapons last year – including knives, machetes, and firearms.”

Racial disproportionality in the system has grown since 2010-11, according to data collated by Stopwatch, an organisation that monitors police powers.

In 2010-11, police in England and Wales stopped and searched 115 out of every 1,000 black people, compared with 17 per 1,000 white people – meaning black people were 6.7 times more likely to be targeted. But in 2019-20, black people were 8.9 times more likely to be searched than white people.

A Stopwatch spokesperson said: “It is not a coincidence that black people have the lowest level of confidence in the police of all ethnicities, with almost half of black Caribbeans surveyed unable to place their trust in their local force. A decade on, the evidence suggests that few lessons – if any – have been learned.”

A 2015 paper found that the rioters “were most likely to come from economically disadvantaged neighbourhoods”, yet many of the areas most affected by the 2011 riots remain among the country’s most deprived, according to Guardian analysis.


Low-level deprivation data shows that 74% of people living in Manchester in 2010 lived in the country’s poorest three deciles. That was consistent with the 76% living in the most deprived areas in 2019, including areas that experienced rioting in 2011 such as Cheetham Hill, Harpurhey, Blackley and Gorton.

A similar picture emerges in Birmingham: two-thirds of residents lived in areas among the country’s most deprived in 2010: that rose slightly to 69% in 2019. In Croydon, 34% of people lived in one of the country’s most-deprived areas in 2010, a figure that has since risen to 36%.

In Haringey and Southwark, both of which have undergone rapid gentrification in the past decade, the proportion of those living among the country’s most deprived areas fell significantly in the intervening years (73% to 54% in Haringey and 68% to 50% in Southwark).

However, Tottenham, in the borough of Haringey, still contains several areas among the most deprived 10% nationally, including Northumberland Park and White Hart Lane, in stark contrast to the richer areas in the south and west of the borough.

In Southwark, parts of Camberwell and Peckham where there was rioting in 2011 are still among the country’s poorest.

Andrew Neilson, the director of campaigns at the Howard League for Penal Reform, said: “Looking back on something like the riots after 10 years, one of the questions that you naturally think about is: will this happen again? And – not to be a scaremonger or anything like that – my answer to that question would be: very much so, yes, I could see it happening again.

“Local government [doesn’t] have the money that it had before. And in the end it is supporting communities locally which is the best way of avoiding the source of conditions that see riots.”

Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
UK and Vietnam Sign Landmark Migration Deal to Fast-Track Returns of Irregular Arrivals
UK Drug-Pricing Overhaul Essential for Life-Sciences Ambition, Says GSK Chief
Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie Temporarily Leave the UK Amid Their Parents’ Royal Fallout
UK Weighs Early End to Oil and Gas Windfall Tax as Reeves Seeks Investment Commitments
UK Retail Inflation Slows as Shop Prices Fall for First Time Since Spring
Next Raises Full-Year Profit Guidance After Strong Third-Quarter Performance
Reform UK’s Lee Anderson Admits to 'Gaming' Benefits System While Advocating Crackdown
United States and South Korea Conclude Major Trade Accord Worth $350 Billion
Hurricane Melissa Strikes Cuba After Devastating Jamaica With Record Winds
Vice President Vance to Headline Turning Point USA Campus Event at Ole Miss
U.S. Targets Maritime Narco-Routes While Border Pressure to Mexico Remains Limited
Bill Gates at 70: “I Have a Real Fear of Artificial Intelligence – and Also Regret”
Elon Musk Unveils Grokipedia: An AI-Driven Alternative to Wikipedia
Saudi Arabia Unveils Vision for First-Ever "Sky Stadium" Suspended Over Desert Floor
Amazon Announces 14 000 Corporate Job Cuts as AI Investment Accelerates
UK Shop Prices Fall for First Time Since March, Food Leads the Decline
London Stock Exchange Group ADR (LNSTY) Earns Zacks Rank #1 Upgrade on Rising Earnings Outlook
Soap legend Tony Adams, long-time star of Crossroads, dies at 84
Rachel Reeves Signals Tax Increases Ahead of November Budget Amid £20-50 Billion Fiscal Gap
NatWest Past Gains of 314% Spotlight Opportunity — But Some Key Risks Remain
UK Launches ‘Golden Age’ of Nuclear with £38 Billion Sizewell C Approval
UK Announces £1.08 Billion Budget for Offshore Wind Auction to Boost 2030 Capacity
UK Seeks Steel Alliance with EU and US to Counter China’s Over-Capacity
UK Struggles to Balance China as Both Strategic Threat and Valued Trading Partner
Argentina’s Markets Surge as Milei’s Party Secures Major Win
British Journalist Sami Hamdi Detained by U.S. Authorities After Visa Revocation Amid Israel-Gaza Commentary
King Charles Unveils UK’s First LGBT+ Armed Forces Memorial at National Memorial Arboretum
At ninety-two and re-elected: Paul Biya secures eighth term in Cameroon amid unrest
Racist Incidents Against UK Nurses Surge by 55%
UK Chancellor Rachel Reeves Cites Shared Concerns With Trump Administration as Foundation for Early US-UK Trade Deal
Essentra plc: A Closer Look at a UK ‘Penny Stock’ Opportunity Amid Market Weakness
U.S. and China Near Deal to Avert Rare-Earth Export Controls Ahead of Trump-Xi Summit
Justin time: Justin Herbert Shields Madison Beer with Impressive Reflex at Lakers Game
Russia’s President Putin Declares Burevestnik Nuclear Cruise Missile Ready for Deployment
Giuffre’s Memoir Alleges Maxwell Claimed Sexual Act with Clooney
House Republicans Move to Strip NYC Mayoral Front-Runner Zohran Mamdani of U.S. Citizenship
Record-High Spoiled Ballots Signal Voter Discontent in Ireland’s 2025 Presidential Election
Philippines’ Taal Volcano Erupts Overnight with 2.4 km Ash Plume
Albania’s Virtual AI 'Minister' Diella Set to 'Birth' Eighty-Three Digital Assistants for MPs
Tesla Unveils Vision for Optimus V3 as ‘Biggest Product of All Time’, Including Surgical Capabilities
Francis Ford Coppola Auctions Luxury Watches After Self-Financed Film Flop
Convicted Sex Offender Mistakenly Freed by UK Prison Service Arrested in London
United States and China Begin Constructive Trade Negotiations Ahead of Trump–Xi Summit
U.S. Treasury Sanctions Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro over Drug-Trafficking Allegations
Miss USA Crowns Nebraska’s Audrey Eckert Amid Leadership Overhaul
‘I Am Not Done’: Kamala Harris Signals Possible 2028 White House Run
NBA Faces Integrity Crisis After Mass Arrests in Gambling Scandal
Swift Heist at the Louvre Sees Eight French Crown Jewels Stolen in Under Seven Minutes
U.S. Halts Trade Talks with Canada After Ontario Ad Using Reagan Voice Triggers Diplomatic Fallout
Microsoft AI CEO: ‘We’re making an AI that you can trust your kids to use’ — but can Microsoft rebuild its own trust before fixing the industry’s?
×