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Afriend of mine is buying a house with a garden in Croydon in suburban south London. In her jubilation, she would probably add several exclamation marks to that sentence. For five years, against the odds, she has put her life back together, living in a former council flat on an inner London estate. Whenever she or her sons have given their address, she says, they have been prematurely judged. Nothing changes.

Other "bad" neighbourhoods have now been revealed by the Neighbourhood Renewal Unit in the latest indices of multiple deprivations. The unit has a new tool, "super output areas". These divide the country into 32,482 neighbourhoods - SOAs - with populations of between 1,000 and 3,000.


So, now we know that Chorleywood West in Hertfordshire is allegedly the closest you'll get to heaven on earth. Its residents have above average good health, university degrees, homes that they own and lots of jobs. They also experience little crime. According to one resident, "a spirit of gentility" rules.

Depressingly, Liverpool, Knowsley, Tower Hamlets, Hackney, Middlesbrough and Hull all have SOAs, putting them among the most deprived areas in the country - as they were 10, 20, 30 years ago.

It is to be hoped that, in future, the graduates of Sure Start, extended schools and children's centres will break the mould. But such schemes need to be hugely expanded. At the same time, the government must seriously consider whether, if it is elected for a third term (when a narrow majority may severely restrict its action), many of its positive policies, starved of funding, will be further undermined by an increasingly coercive attitude to families.


Identification, referral and tracking, proposed in Every Child Matters, raises many concerns, for example. Will it mean that whole neighbourhoods consist of "flagged" children, adding to the stigma of the estate on which they live? If basic provision - social services, counselling support, parent groups and child guidance - continues to be understaffed and poorly funded, what good will flagging really do, apart from demonising a child at an even earlier age?

We know that turning around communities takes time, flexibility, and significant resources - more than the government appears to acknowledge. It would be a tragedy if Tony Blair's domestic legacy is gradually reduced to the image of the disciplinarian state taking an ever thicker stick to families who won't "behave".