Scunthorpe is known throughout the country as the Industrial Garden Town and it is easy to see why, given the town is the UK’s largest steel processing centre which employed more than 27,000 people at its industrial height. The rate of steel manufacturing has decreased dramatically over recent years yet any economic issues which have arose as a result have failed to dampen the spirits of the locals.
‘The people of Scunthorpe are very nice,’ says owner of Peebles and Wayte Ophthalmic Opticians Geof Wayte. ‘Even if they have a complaint, which isn’t very often, they’re very pleasant about it and don’t come across as aggressive in the slightest. I have been practising here for a long time and have loved every minute of it.’
Scunthorpe’s community feel means Wayte has never felt the need to advertise his house practice, instead relying on word of mouth. He says: ‘We don’t gain anything from advertising and it’s just very expensive, there’s only a few independent practices in Scunthorpe so there’s enough work to go around for us.’
The town has changed a lot over the 40 years Wayte (pictured left) has been practising. He says: ‘Scunthorpe has gone downhill, the town centre isn’t what it used to be. When I first came here I could walk out of the door and purchase whatever I wanted but now lots of shops have shut down. Marks and Spencer left the high street to go to an out of town retail place which was a big blow to the town, but it’s no different to the landscape of other town centres as the same problems arise.’
Further down the road sits the Scunthorpe Specsavers store which is kept busy thanks to a combination of the town’s diverse demographic and market town values. Optometrist director Martin Dean says: ‘Fridays and Saturdays are our really busy days where we see a mixture of patients and now there’s quite a lot of Eastern Europeans. People like to come in and have a chat with us while they are wandering past. Scunthorpe has still got a market town feel to it, it doesn’t feel like a big city at all.’
According to Dean, the store’s greatest challenge is recruiting permanent optometrists, an issue echoed in towns throughout the UK. ‘Getting good reliable optometrists to visit us is definitely a huge problem. We have struggled to get cover in the past as locums are sometimes reluctant to come to us as they think we’re really far away from everything else.’
Currently there are no community eye care contracts set up between Lincolnshire LOC and North Lincolnshire CCG, something which Dean hopes will soon change. ‘I would like us to get much more involved with enhanced optical services. I do feel a bit left out about this as other [Specsavers] stores have had these services for a while. I think we will probably have something by the end of the year.’
Who’s in town?
Total: 8
Independents: 5
Multiples: 3
Average costs
Prices of an eye examination range from £19 to £30. The average cost is £23.
Population - see pie chart
Scunthorpe population: 83,124 (ONS 2011)
Community eye care
According to the Locsu Atlas Map of Optical Variation, Lincolnshire LOC has not secured any contracts for NHS North Lincolnshire CCG.
Health and affluence
- The average house price in Scunthorpe is £116,212 (Rightmove, 2016) compared with an average of £216,750 for England and Wales (Land Registry, 2016).
- NHS expenditure on vision problems in Lincolnshire per person is £106, compared with the UK average of £89 (RNIB Sight Loss Data Tool 2015).
- 5,740 patients live in Lincolnshire with late stage wet AMD and 2,810 with dry AMD (RNIB).
- There are about 9,050 people living in Lincolshire who have cataract, 7,300 people with glaucoma and 51,140 with diabetes. Some 14,880 patients have diabetic retinopathy according to RNIB figures.
Fun facts
Scunthorpe was close to the epicentre of one of the largest earthquakes experienced in the British Isles on February 27, 2008.
England stars Kevin Keegan and Ray Clemence played for Scunthorpe United in the early 70s before signing for Liverpool.
Keadby Bridge, pictured, formally known as King George V Bridge, was one of the first electrically powered bascule bridges in UK.
Scunthorpe was voted the least romantic place in the UK in 2013 by hotels.com.
The town appears in the Domesday Book in 1086 as Escumesthorpe, which is Old Norse for ‘Skuma’s homestead’.
Scunthorpe United FC are known as ‘The Iron’.
