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  • Anti-Poverty and Inequalities Strategy Blog

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    “Together, we build an East Ayrshire free from poverty and inequality, where everyone can flourish, belong and shape their future”

    This is the first of many deep dives into Community Planning. Within our Local Outcome Improvement Plan (LOIP), we aim to improve our local communities through 4 priority areas:

    • Growth
    • Wellbeing
    • Fairness
    • Sustainability

    Within this blog, to mark Challenge Poverty Week 2025, we will explore fairness by shining a spotlight onto the Community Planning Partnership’s new Anti-Poverty and Inequalities Strategy, which was approved by the CPP Board in September 2025.

    The Anti-Poverty and Inequalities Strategy provides a new

    “Together, we build an East Ayrshire free from poverty and inequality, where everyone can flourish, belong and shape their future”

    This is the first of many deep dives into Community Planning. Within our Local Outcome Improvement Plan (LOIP), we aim to improve our local communities through 4 priority areas:

    • Growth
    • Wellbeing
    • Fairness
    • Sustainability

    Within this blog, to mark Challenge Poverty Week 2025, we will explore fairness by shining a spotlight onto the Community Planning Partnership’s new Anti-Poverty and Inequalities Strategy, which was approved by the CPP Board in September 2025.

    The Anti-Poverty and Inequalities Strategy provides a new framework and guidance to strengthen and coordinate our work to tackle poverty here in East Ayrshire.

    Our aim with this strategy is to identify the root causes of poverty in East Ayrshire and ensure we work effectively in partnership to respond to the challenges these create.

    The Context

    Background – Poverty in East Ayrshire

    Poverty in East Ayrshire is a problem. Out of the 32 council areas in Scotland, East Ayrshire is the 7th most deprived authority in the country according to the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD).

    Unemployment rates sit at 4%, with 43.2% of economically inactive residents suffering from long-term sickness – higher than the Scottish average of 34.6%. Healthy life expectancy in East Ayrshire is also lower than the Scottish average. Women in East Ayrshire have a healthy life expectancy of 55.4 years compared to the Scottish average of 60, and men have a healthy life expectancy of 55.8 years compared to the Scottish average of 59.6.

    Additionally, 26.2% of households in East Ayrshire claim Universal Credit, which is higher than the UK wide average of 20%. These claims are predominantly made by single person households who make up 13.5% of this number, with a further 8.3% coming from single person households with children.

    Lastly, 23.6% of children in East Ayrshire live in poverty, this is above the Scottish average of 21.2%. This accounts for 6000 children living in poverty, of which 70% come from homes with at least one adult being employed and in work. We can see by this that low-income is a serious issue we need to address.

    Lived Experience

    Due to the complexity of poverty, and the issues it creates, it would be an injustice not to use the experiences of local people to inform our decision making around the new strategy. Numbers and statistic do not tell us the full extent of the struggles people and families in poverty face.

    Due to this, we consulted with residents to listen to the issues they face, with the aim of breaking down the barriers they experience. Discussions with people who are struggling with poverty will continue, with a Lived Experience Group being set up to inform future decisions on poverty and inequality in East Ayrshire.

    The Lived Experience Group will support and inform strategic decisions on poverty across the coming years, playing a central role in the actions taken on policy on poverty.

    “I was homeless at 9 years old”

    “There are times I cannot afford to eat myself, so I leave myself with nothing for days sometimes weeks, so my children have enough to eat and I suffer in silence until the unbearable hunger pains from my own stomach tires me down”

    “I lost my apprenticeship because of addiction issues stemming from my childhood abuse and trauma. My life then descended into one of crime and chaos”

    The Strategy

    Strategic Themes

    The strategy has been split into 5 themes which will be used to inform any decisions we make and benchmark our progress on tackling poverty. These 5 themes are:

    • Household Poverty
    • Child Poverty
    • Health and Wellbeing Inequalities
    • Building Organisational Change & Capacity
    • Building Individual & Community Resilience

    Each theme comes with its own objectives for achieving success. If these objectives are met, then we believe that progress can be made towards addressing poverty and inequality in East Ayrshire.

    Strategic Themes and Objectives


    Household Poverty

    1. Maximising income

    2. Reducing financial pressures

    3. Better access to services

    Child Poverty

    1. Supporting wellbeing and development

    2. Enabling learing and achievement

    3. Building resilience for the future

    Health and Wellbeing Inequalities

    1. Building a healthy workforce

    2. Investing in wellbeing communities

    3. Bridging the gap - tackling different health outcomes

    Building Organisational Change and Capacity

    1. Embedding a whole-systems approach

    2. Strengthen capacity and workforce skills

    3. Using evidence and community voice

    Building Individual and Community Resilience

    1. Strengthening social networks

    2. Empowering individuals and communities

    3. Listening to lived experience

    Monitoring and Reporting

    The Strategic Oversight Group will report their progress to the CPP board. Through doing this, the Strategic Oversight Group can be held accountable for all the actions they take to tackle poverty and inequality. This progress will then be tracked through quarterly and annual reports.

    Additionally, the Strategic Oversight Group will hold reviews at least once per quarter, to check whether targets have been met and take on feedback from partners to assess if their strategy has been effective or not.Through frequent reports and actively reviewing decisions which are made, we hope that it will be easier for both the public and our own teams to track our progress.

    Conclusion

    The Anti-Poverty and Inequalities Strategy shows a commitment from East Ayrshire Community Planning Partners to address poverty and its underlying causes. Although the time and resources it will take to tackle poverty are substantial, this strategy is a positive step in the right direction.

    We will continue to do everything we can to improve the local communities of East Ayrshire and tackle the causes of poverty.

    If you have any questions about community planning, or the Anti-Poverty and Inequalities Strategy, you can contact us through our email: communityplanning@east-ayrshire.gov.uk

  • Annual Report Blog

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    Hello! Welcome to our update on the latest progress made by your local Community Planning Partnership (CPP). If you are unsure about what your East Ayrshire CPP is, here is a very quick rundown of its role in your communities.

    The Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act of 2015 sets out the framework for community planning across Scotland. All of us within the CPP aim to improve your local community with our 15-year East Ayrshire Community Plan. The East Ayrshire Community Plan, launched in 2015, runs until 2030 and strives to improves outcomes for local communities.

    The aim of this is

    Hello! Welcome to our update on the latest progress made by your local Community Planning Partnership (CPP). If you are unsure about what your East Ayrshire CPP is, here is a very quick rundown of its role in your communities.

    The Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act of 2015 sets out the framework for community planning across Scotland. All of us within the CPP aim to improve your local community with our 15-year East Ayrshire Community Plan. The East Ayrshire Community Plan, launched in 2015, runs until 2030 and strives to improves outcomes for local communities.

    The aim of this is to improve your lives through action in your communities, with the goal of creating a better East Ayrshire for everyone. We review our aims in 3-year intervals through a Local Outcomes Improvement Plan (LOIP), with the current period of review being 2024-27.

    On the 11th of September 2025, our CPP board met with the East Ayrshire Council’s elected members to discuss the progress we have made across the year of 2024-25. If you wish to read the annual report yourself, you can find the 2024-25 annual report on our community planning website. If not, the rest of this blog will give you a summary.

    For the period of 2024-27, our LOIP earmarked 4 priority areas for improvement:

    • Growth
    • Wellbeing
    • Fairness
    • Sustainability

    The 4 Priorities

    Growth
    On the priority of growth, we aimed to help local businesses in East Ayrshire by using the potential offered by the Ayrshire Growth Deal. We also aimed to improve the opportunities available to young people, and the availability of employability services in East Ayrshire.

    Within education, we are happy to state that the outcomes of young people leaving school have been very good, with the latest figures suggesting 95% of them are entering positive destinations.

    On local businesses, partners – including the Council’s Business Support Team – have supported the development of 242 new businesses in East Ayrshire and improved procurement spend with local enterprises by 6.4%.

    Lastly, the opening of SL66 in Cumnock, paired with the already existing SL33 in Kilmarnock, has had a positive impact on the employability of our local workforce. This success has prompted a further hub in Galston to be developed which will open in 2025/26.

    Wellbeing
    For the priority of wellbeing, we use our cooperation with the Health and Social Care Partnership (HSCP) to improve the health and wellbeing of your communities.

    Within childcare, this was done through the effective delivery of health information, especially to mothers around the feeding and care of children between 6 weeks to 6 months, through Babychat. Additionally, the percentage of primary one children who are a healthy weight has been trending upwards since 2020/21. The work we have done in cooperation with the HSCP within children’s wellbeing has been a positive to come out of this reporting period.

    However, there is still room for improvement around school attendance rates, where East Ayrshire is below the national average, and as of 2023/24 is ranked the lowest in Scotland at 88.3%. This is only 2 percentage points below the national average of 90.3% but we are working to improve this in future.

    Moving away from child wellbeing, referral pathways to the East Ayrshire Recovery Network have been strengthened to ensure people are recognised at an earlier stage of addiction for intervention. With the help of our partners, we paired this with peer support through volunteers, who helped people overcome barriers such as transportation to aid their journey overcoming addiction.

    It is vital that this work is undertaken, as East Ayrshire suffers from drug deaths like everywhere else in Scotland, with 31 drug related deaths recorded in 2023. Mental health is also an area of significant concern, with 24 probable deaths by suicide recorded in 2023. Wellbeing remains a top priority for us all in the CPP and HSCP, particularly as healthy life expectancy figures have not shown the improvement that we would wish to see in recent years.

    Fairness
    Moving onto the priority of Fairness, our aim is to create a more equal and equitable society by tackling poverty in East Ayrshire – with help from the third sector and Scottish Government via the Fairer Futures Partnership - and addressing anti-social behaviour.

    Tackling poverty is a very difficult task, and we have done our best to confront the issues faced by our communities. Starting with the positives, partners – with consultation with everyone in the CPP – are implementing a new Anti-Poverty and Inequalities Strategy. This strategy aims to tackle the causes of, and issues created by, poverty within East Ayrshire and it is due to be launched before the end of 2025. With a new strategy in place, we hope that further progress will be made towards tackling poverty across East Ayrshire.

    Other positives include the work done by the Financial Inclusion Team (FIT), who successfully secured a total of £5,589,628 in financial gains for the residents of East Ayrshire. The FIT are also involved in a further positive, as they will be collaborating with the Universal Credit Team to create a new Welfare Rights Service following a recent review of services. This marks some good progress made to tackle poverty.

    One further area we are proud to highlight is the impact made by the East Ayrshire Carers Centre, who helped unpaid carers gain vital support networks. 137 new young carers were registered for support services, reporting that this help reduced their social isolation, stress and anxiety, while also increasing their resilience and improving their financial circumstances.

    However, there are also areas where we want to improve. While some progress was made on child poverty in East Ayrshire, with a 4.3% reduction in child poverty from the previous reported year, there are still around 6000 children living in poverty. This accounts for 23.6% of East Ayrshire’s children, a number and percentage which is much too high. We hope that the newly developing Anti-Poverty and Inequalities Strategy will aid our progress and that we will see the benefit of our current prevention and early intervention work in the future.

    A further issue is that 14.3% of East Ayrshire’s population is currently earning less than the living wage. This is an increase on the 8.7% seen in 2022/23, showing that this is an evolving challenge. While the council have aimed to make some progress on this by employing 240 young people through graduate internships and apprenticeships, more work must be done with local businesses to address this issue.

    Lastly, on crime, there has been some progress made related to anti-social behaviour which is down by 14.2%, a success for the objective of addressing this type of crime, and sexual crimes which are down by 5.6%. However, there were also some problems, with violent crime up 7.9% due to an increase in common assaults. Assaults on emergency workers also rose, with a sharp increase of 40.2% on the 5-year average. This provided a mixed picture for crime reduction in East Ayrshire, with progress in some metrics but issues in other areas.

    Sustainability
    On the priority of sustainability, our aim is to increase the resilience and sustainability of our communities, environment, and services we offer to local people. This led to many positives across the reporting period.

    Within the Prevention and Early Intervention Fund – established in 2024 – the council agreed to set aside £4 million each year for the next ten years to fund prevention and intervention initiatives. These include projects such as:

    • Half-Price School Meals
    • Additional Support Needs Holiday Support
    • Power of Attorney
    • Jobs and Training
    • Speech
    • Language and Communication
    • Third Sector Wellbeing Initiatives

    Other achievements include the awarding of the Platinum Digital Telecare Implementation Award to the HSCP in January 2025, showing a clear commitment to digital care, and the reduction of 14500 tonnes of carbon emissions by local businesses. The large volume of carbon reduction was achieved through working with Scottish Enterprise and Net Zero Nation, who assisted local businesses in gaining £37 million in new contracts which created over 100 new jobs.

    While these achievements are positive, we do recognise there are some issues within sustainability through depopulation, with the overall population of East Ayrshire expected to decrease by 1.7% by 2028. Some areas in the South of the council are expected to see a 16% decrease in population, while Northern areas may see increases of up to 13%. This ever-evolving situation poses a challenge to all local communities which we aim to address.

    Engaging with Elected Members
    On the 11th of September, the 2024-25 annual report was presented to councillors at a joint event with our CPP board. Within the session, councillors considered the findings of the report and explored the challenges faced within the last year.

    The event was very productive, with councillors engaging constructively with us to discuss the progress we have made, and our potential next steps for activity during 2025/26 and beyond. There was a very good attendance of the event, and constructive discussion on all the LOIP’s results.

    Conclusion
    Everyone involved in the East Ayrshire CPP recognises that we have made progress across the past year but also faced challenges.

    We strive to make our communities a place we can all be proud of, and we hope that our progress across this last period has contributed positively to that. We will do everything we can across the next year to improve the work we have done and continue to support your local communities across the whole of East Ayrshire.

    If in the meantime, if you have any questions about community planning, you can contact us through our email.