MORE than a third of youngsters in Bury are said to be living under the breadline.

And the number of children living in poverty across the region has gone up.

This is according to new figures from Loughborough University commissioned by the End Child Poverty coalition.

The research has shown child poverty rates have gone up in all but one of Greater Manchester’s boroughs too, with four of the North West’s top 10 increases by area for child poverty were seen in the city-region’s boroughs.

Bury experienced a 2.9 per cent rise so more than a third, 33.8 per cent, of its children are now under the breadline.

In Oldham, the rate has risen by 8.1 per cent in the last four years, from 31.8 per cent of the borough’s children living in poverty in 2014 to 39.9 per cent now.

For Manchester, the rate has risen by seven per cent from 33.6 to 40.6 per cent.

In Bolton, this year 6.3 per cent more children are living in poverty than were four years ago, going from 32.7 to 39 per cent.

le has seen a 5.3pc increase, now with 37.7pc and Tameside saw a 3.4pc rise, with 34.8pc of its children now living in poverty.

Salford saw a 2.3 per cent increase, so 34.8 per cent of its children are now in poverty and Wigan saw a 1.7 per cent increase to 30.8 per cent.

One Manchester charity said the problem of child poverty has never been solved by consecutive governments for generations.

Des Lynch, of Wood Street Mission in Manchester, which provides help and support to struggling families and individuals, said: “Child poverty has never gone away. We’re 151 years old and we’ve been dealing with it in all of that time.

“It’s a subject that has never been tackled by any government, let alone the one we have at the moment.

“The issue comes up in manifestos but then is dispatched into the background.!

Des claimed that the problem is hitting those who class as ‘the working poor’ the hardest, but people aren’t coming forward for help because of Covid.

He said: “People are too scared to access help, they’re sticking to the rules, no matter what is sometimes said out there, they’re trying their best and they don’t know what to do. 

“But the poor housing rates, the poor quality of housing....that’s been a problem for some 40 years with housing costs increasing.

“We haven’t been building enough social housing and what we are building isn’t the touching the sides.

“Giving developers permission to build is all well and good, but with the small percentage of social housing required, quite frankly it’s negligible.

“And the knock on effect that has on children, it’s appalling, we should not be bringing children up in these environments.”

Thomas Lawson, chief executive of anti-poverty charity Turn2us, added: “In 2001, our government set a target to end child poverty by 2020, yet here we are reporting once again that it is rising.

“Low wages, soaring rents and the stubbornly high cost of living is pulling families into poverty and drying up the opportunities of so many young people.

“If the government truly believes in compassion and justice, ministers must first admit the problem then fully commit to solving it.”

A spokesman for the Department of Work and Pensions said: "There are 100,000 fewer children living in absolute poverty than in 2009/10 and making sure every child gets the best start in life is central to our efforts to level up opportunity across the country.

“We have already taken significant steps to do this by raising the living wage, ending the benefit freeze and injecting more than £9.3bn into the welfare system to help those in most need.”