To think it's outrageous that there is nowhere in my town of 200000 people offering Alevels

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There no getting away from it, this is a deprived area and with educational provision like this there is little prospect of social mobility.

We have 5 large secondary schools. Not one of them has a sixth form. There is a further education college but it has merged with two other colleges in surrounding towns and ours now only offers vocational qualifications. To do A levels you either need to go to sixth form at a school 8 miles in one direction (with rubbish public tramsport links) or a 25 min (expensive) train journey in the other direction.

Obviously for committed students with supportive families , that's not insurmountable but another example of how life is even harder for those whose opportunities are more limited in the first place.

Is this usual in deprived areas? Who do I need to take it up with?

I am really shocked, my local 6th form college is in a really deprived area and provides coaches from all over for free.

Interesting.

The same issue exists in other European countries. Deprived areas just don’t offer much in the way of high school education that leads to university.

That is shocking OP. When I was at secondary school nearly 40 years ago, every secondary school had a sixth form that I knew of. I did classes with only 6 of us in the class, but it was provided.