A report claiming a village has "the most geographical deprivation" in the South East has been blasted by the Government.

Wrotham was featured on the front page of today's Telegraph in a story about how rural services are in decline.

But although the newpaper referred to “a report published quietly on the Department of Communities and Local Government website last month”, the report was actually published in 2007 and used data gathered in 2005.

The village - close to junction two of the M20 - scored low in part of the survey that measured how far residents live from their nearest primary school, supermarket, GP survey and post office.

It was the worst in the south east and 45th worst in the country.

But Wrotham was not said to be deprived in terms of income, housing, educational achievement or employment.

Heather Monro, a spokeswoman for the Department of Communities and Local Government, said: “This is not a new report. Figures for the 2007 Indices of Deprivation were published in full in December last year.

“In any case, the nature of rural communities means that distance travelled to access services may be greater - the catchments area of a school in the country will be higher than one in a city, but that does not mean that the quality of the service provided is any less.

“There is simply no evidence to suggest that areas are losing out because of distance from services. In fact the data shows very little change in terms of where concentrations of deprivation exist.

“It is also disingenuous to use this measure in isolation as an accurate reflection of deprivation, since the index is a carefully weighted bundle of several aspects of deprivation of which this is only one.”

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