Mansfield is the sixth most improved local authority area in England in a table that ranks areas according to deprivation.

The Indices of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) which were published last week, rank Mansfield as the 59th most deprived local authority area in England out of 326.

This is an improvement of 23 places since 2010 when Mansfield was ranked 36th and an improvement of 31 places since the IMD were first published in 2000. First place in the table is the most deprived, with 326 the least deprived.

A total of 32,844 neighbourhoods were scored across England for the study, which was published by the Department for Communities and Local Government.

Neighbourhoods were scored according to seven key areas – income, employment, education, health, crime, barriers to housing and services and living environment.

The Executive Mayor Kate Allsop said: “This huge improvement is testament to the hard work that the council and our partners have done in recent years and continue to do to ensure we keep improving the lives of those in our communities.”