The once-booming town that’s now ‘the UK’s unhappiest’ – ‘everybody’s on crack cocaine’.TA
EXCLUSIVE: The port town is the base of the Royal Navy’s nuclear-submarine production but remains in the clutches of “poverty and deprivation”.
Barrow has seen an increase in ‘deprivation’ over the last decade, locals say (Image: Tim Merry/Staff Photographer)
“The poverty here is really bad. Everybody’s on crack cocaine, and there’s nothing in Barrow for young people,” says charity worker Laura Gibney, 40. Perched at the end of the Furness peninsula, the Cumbrian town was once a booming industrial base, home to the world’s biggest steelworks and a major shipyard that specialised in building warships. Deindustrialisation after the Second World War hit hard, but Barrow remains Britain’s last “company town”, dominated by the yard’s monopoly on building nuclear submarines for the Royal Navy, currently operated by BAE Systems.
That military importance, which saw King Charles confer royal status on the Port of Barrow in September 2025, sits uneasily beside the town’s deprivation. Barrow-in-Furness was named the unhappiest place in Britain by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) in 2014 and ranked fourth in a league table of deaths from drink, drugs and suicide in 2024.
In the same year, then-Prime Minister Keir Starmer pledged £220million to reinvigorate the town centre, including thousands of new homes and improvements to health and education. Simon Case was appointed in early 2025 to chair Team Barrow, the public-private partnership overseeing the plan. But residents who pointed to empty units and smashed shopfronts said little has changed for the better.
The yard is both Barrow’s lifeline and, some say, part of the problem. John Michael Murphy, 78, who worked in the old shipyard before retiring, said BAE had “done a world of good” by boosting employment, adding: “If it weren’t for them, we’d be nothing.” However, Jacqui Clark, 58, who works with charities supporting residents’ mental health and housing needs, said BAE has “taken away from local businesses” by paying wages that high street retailers cannot match.
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The economic disparity is stark. “You don’t realise until you’re actually working on the ground how bad the problem is here,” she told the Express. “People are homeless, they can’t sustain tenancies, and landlords have turned most of the houses into HMOs because they can get more money from them.”
John Michael Murphy says the town has become a ‘disgrace’ over his lifetime (Image: Tim Merry/Staff Photographer)
Laura Gibney and Jacqui Clark say Barrow has seen an increase in poverty and deprivation (Image: Tim Merry/Staff Photographer)
Even with the yard’s draw, many of the young workers it attracts choose not to live in Barrow itself. Declan Pugh, 29, commutes each day from nearby Millom along the single road out to the remote peninsula. He once came into the town “all the time”, but shop closures and its “run down” appearance have put him off.
“It’s sad to see because it used to be a nice place to come for a day trip,” he said. “There’s a lot more empty units and a lot more vape shops and barbers, which we don’t need.” Caroline Stewart, 31, agreed: “It definitely doesn’t have the shops it used to. There was a Marks and Spencer and a Debenhams, and there isn’t anymore. We used to come here just to wander around, but we wouldn’t now.”
Ms Gibney recalled the town being a hub for nightlife and shopping when she was growing up, but said that era has passed. Mr Murphy also noted that Barrow has become “very run down” and a “disgrace” over his lifetime. “Shopfronts aren’t kept up, there are weeds, there’s rubbish building up,” he said. “The people here are lovely, but the way some of the town looks is disgusting.”
Economic struggles posed by the town’s remote location, making it a distant outpost in the bustling Lake District region, were exacerbated during the Covid-19 pandemic, when Barrow not only experienced the shop closures seen across the country, but one of Britain’s highest mortality rates. Its population has steadily dropped over the 30 years to 2022, and now sits at around 56,000, skewing older than the national average with almost 22% over the age of 65.
BAE workers like Declan Pugh, pictured with partner Carolyn and daughter Connie, live elsewhere (Image: Tim Merry/Staff Photographer)
Empty, boarded-up shops are increasingly common in the Cumbrian town (Image: Tim Merry/Staff Photographer)
Flo Woods says she doesn’t feel safe coming into the town at night (Image: Tim Merry/Staff Photographer)
The town’s physical decay is compounded by a growing sense of insecurity. Flo Woods, 70, who moved to Barrow around 20 years ago, pointed to “empty buildings, windows getting smashed and boys on scooters flying up and down the street, nearly crashing into people”. “It needs sorting out,” she said. “I don’t come in at all at night because it doesn’t feel safe.”
Ms Gibney also noted that the town’s “poverty and deprivation has gotten a lot worse over the last decade”, adding that people are trapped in a “vicious cycle of reoffending because there’s no other option for them”. Drug supply is a documented problem in the area. Barrow has been a repeated target for “county lines” gangs, with the Merseyside-linked ‘Jimmy line’ dismantled in 2021 and a joint Cumbria Police and Greater Manchester Police operation leading to charges against four Barrow residents for conspiracy to supply heroin and crack cocaine in 2023.
“It doesn’t feel like there’s investment for people,” Ms Gibney said. “The council is spending money on redoing the roads and creating new bike lanes which nobody uses instead.”
Many locals also link the decline to a loss of control. Power now sits more than 30 miles away in Kendal, where Westmorland and Furness Council is based, into which Barrow was incorporated in 2023. Others trace the decline back to 1974, when the town was carved out of Lancashire and absorbed into the administrative county of Cumbria.
Smashed windows are a common sight in the town, according to residents (Image: Tim Merry/Staff Photographer)
Locals say drug addiction and crime run rampant in Barrow (Image: Tim Merry/Staff Photographer)
The area’s deprivation contrasts with its still-booming engineering industry (Image: Tim Merry/Staff Photographer)
Nathan Holmes, a Reform UK member of Barrow Town Council who was elected in 2025, said residents feel “jaded” because of long-term “mishandling of finances” by elected officials. “The council has a long-standing habit of starting something then running out of money,” he told the Express.
“They talk about big projects like the Marina Village, which is meant to be a new waterfront neighbourhood, but nothing actually happens for decades. They run out of money and these schemes end up becoming white elephants.”
He also pointed to the scars that erode local pride; a former arts venue whose air conditioning caused a Legionnaires’ disease outbreak in 2002, killing seven people, a market hall shut after an asbestos leak in February and the imposing presence of a vacant, vandalised former tax office in the town centre.
“Crime is a bit of a mess at the moment,” Mr Holmes said. “These teenage kids roam around at night and kick doors in and start fires. The McDonald’s in town has a bouncer and the Greggs just put in a planning application to get roller shutters. There were two weed-busting operations recently in the space of a week.”
Nathan Holmes says local dissatisfaction has emboldened the Reform vote (Image: Tim Merry/Staff Photographer)
Signs of the town’s neglect are visible on a walk around its centre (Image: Tim Merry/Staff Photographer)
He said the town’s image has slipped from a celebrated “Chicago of the North” to a settlement in the “armpit of England”, and argued that dissatisfaction with traditional party rule helped Reform win three councillors in 2025 by-elections.
Barrow’s future is, despite appearances, more secure than that of most struggling towns. It produces the navy’s nuclear-powered Astute-class submarines and the new Dreadnought class, work described as a “critical contribution” to national security. It is also set to start production on the first AUKUS submarines as part of a deal between the UK, US and Australia next year.
Team Barrow has published a 10-year strategic vision, “Barrow Rising”, promising a “once in a lifetime” transformation of the town centre with Government backing. Barrow has the potential to rise again; the challenge is ensuring the wealth generated inside the shipyard walls finally spills over into the streets outside.
The Express has contacted Barrow Town Council, Westmorland and Furness Council, Cumbria Police and BAE Systems for comment.
