If you work with deprivation data, you have probably seen places described as being in “IMD decile 1” or “IMD decile 2”. These labels are widely used in funding applications, needs assessments and place-based analysis, but they are not always well explained.
This guide sets out what an IMD decile is, why deciles are useful, how they can support funding bids and how to check the decile for an area.
An IMD decile is a way of grouping small areas in England into 10 equal-sized bands based on their level of deprivation.
The Index of Multiple Deprivation, or IMD, gives each small area a rank. These ranks are then divided into 10 groups, known as deciles.
IMD deciles are calculated from ranks, not from the raw deprivation score alone.
Each Lower Layer Super Output Area, or LSOA, is ranked relative to every other LSOA in England. The most deprived area is ranked 1, the next most deprived is ranked 2, and so on down to the least deprived (33,755).
Those ranked areas are then split into 10 groups:
| Decile | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Decile 1 | 10% most deprived |
| Decile 2 | 10-20% most deprived |
| Decile 3 | 20-30% most deprived |
| Decile 4 | 30-40% most deprived |
| Decile 5 | 40-50% most deprived |
| Decile 6 | 40-50% least deprived |
| Decile 7 | 30-40% least deprived |
| Decile 8 | 20-30% least deprived |
| Decile 9 | 10-20% least deprived |
| Decile 10 | 10% least deprived |
This means deciles are a simplified way of expressing where an area sits in the national distribution.
Because deciles divide all areas into 10 equal groups, each decile contains roughly the same number of LSOAs.
That makes them easier to work with than raw ranks, especially when you want to summarise patterns across a place or explain deprivation to a non-technical audience.
A key point is that IMD deciles are relative, not absolute.
They show how deprived an area is compared with other areas in England. They do not tell you how much deprivation exists in absolute terms, and they do not show the size of the gap between one area and another.
So an area in decile 2 is among the more deprived areas nationally, but that does not mean it is twice as deprived as an area in decile 4. It simply ranks higher in the national distribution.
The same approach can also be applied to the individual domains, such as:
That means you can look at overall deprivation deciles, or focus on the specific domain that best fits your work.
For example, a project about fuel poverty, access to services, or educational outcomes may benefit from looking beyond the overall IMD measure to the most relevant domain deciles.
IMD ranks are precise, but they can be hard to interpret quickly. Deciles make the data easier to communicate and apply. We also have additional resources looking at how you can use the IMD within funding bids more broadly.
Deciles help identify priority neighbourhoods at a glance.
Many organisations use decile 1 or decile 2 as shorthand for the most deprived areas. This can be especially useful when deciding where to target limited resources, outreach, or investment.
Deciles are also useful for summarising deprivation across a wider geography.
For example, instead of listing the rank of every LSOA in a local authority, you can say that “40% of neighbourhoods in this local authority are in IMD deciles 1 and 2.”
That is often a much clearer and more useful statement for reports, presentations, and strategy documents.
Deciles usually make maps, charts, and dashboards easier to read.
A ranked dataset with thousands of values can be visually overwhelming. Grouping areas into deciles creates a cleaner picture and helps users spot patterns more quickly.
This is particularly helpful when communicating with partners, funders and other stakeholders who may not be as familiar with data interpretation.
IMD deciles can strengthen the evidence section of a funding bid by making deprivation data easier to explain and easier for assessors to understand.
Some grant programmes explicitly prioritise or require work in more deprived areas, often favouring projects in decile 1 or 2 neighbourhoods.
In these cases, being able to show that your project is based in, or primarily serves, areas in the most deprived deciles can be a strong part of your case.
Projects do not always sit neatly within a single highly deprived LSOA.
Sometimes the postcode of the delivery site falls just outside deciles 1 or 2, but the surrounding neighbourhoods are much more deprived. In that case, decile data can still help you build a fuller picture of local need.
For example, you may be able to show that:
That kind of contextual evidence can be more persuasive than relying on a single rank or postcode alone.
A raw rank can be technically accurate but hard to interpret.
Saying that an area is ranked 4,218th most deprived in England may not mean much to a funder unless they already know how many areas there are overall.
Saying that it is in decile 2 is usually much clearer. It immediately tells the reader that the area is among the 20% most deprived neighbourhoods nationally.
There are several ways to check an IMD decile, depending on what geography you are starting with. We also look more specifically at identifying the most deprived neighbourhoods in your area here.
This is often the quickest option if you want to understand the deprivation decile for a specific location.
A postcode itself does not have its own IMD rank or decile; it is linked to the LSOA that contains it.
You can use free tools to check which IMD decile a postcode sits within.
If you already know the LSOA code or name, you can check the decile within the dataset table itself, which is available to download online. “File 2: Domains of Deprivation” includes information on the IMD and each of the individual domains.
Start by searching for the LSOA you are interested in in Column A and read across to the decile field for the overall IMD, or for the specific deprivation domain you are interested in.
Sometimes you want to understand deprivation across several neighbourhoods rather than just one.
Begin by creating a list of the LSOAs you want to analyse.
For each LSOA, find the relevant IMD decile using the process above.
Then summarise the results across the group. For example, you might calculate:
A local authority does not have a single IMD decile in the same way an LSOA does. Instead, it contains many LSOAs, each with its own decile.
Start by identifying all the LSOAs within the local authority.
Next, find the IMD decile for each of those LSOAs.
Then summarise the pattern across the authority. For example, you could report:
This is often the most useful way to describe deprivation at local authority level, because it reflects variation within the area rather than reducing it to a single figure.
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