Austerity map UK

Cuts to welfare payments will hit the local economies of northern towns and cities as much as five times as hard as the Conservative heartland southern counties, according to research commissioned by the Financial Times into the impact of austerity.

The government's radical reform programme, aimed at reducing one of the largest fiscal deficits among OECD nations by moving people off benefits and into work, is taking £19bn a year out of working-age social security between now and 2015.

The Financial Times interactive map shows, for example, that the annual impact per working-age adult in Colchester is £399 and in Tendring (the Clacton to Harwich peninsula) it is £618.