Out of order! Local MP’s anger after EastEnders portrays Milton Keynes as a crime-ridden slum
POLITICIANS don’t often feature in EastEnders storylines – but the MP for Milton Keynes North has taken centre stage in its latest gritty drama.
Tory Ben Everitt said the way the city he represents was seen in the BBC soap was ‘out of order’ – and called on its producers to apologise to residents.
He spoke out after some locals were apparently outraged by its portrayal as a ‘slum’ in recent episodes.
They were shocked to see rundown buildings, vandalism and drugs as the backdrop to crime-ridden scenes set in Milton Keynes where the character Bianca Jackson, played by Patsy Palmer, lives after moving from Albert Square.
In one scene in Monday’s episode, a child character was described as not being in school and instead ‘roaming the estate, carting drugs around, eating out of bins’.
Bianca was also seen hurling rubbish over the balcony of her dingy block of flats on to the street below, and later threw a brick through a neighbour’s window after an argument.
The scenes were actually filmed in Barnet, north London, and saw characters Whitney Dean (Shona McGarty) and her partner Zack Hudson (James Farrar) visit Bianca, who has not been seen on the programme since 2019.
Milton Keynes was developed in the 1970s as a new town to relieve housing pressure in London and has often been the butt of jibes in the past about its grid system, concrete cows and roundabouts. Mr Everitt, 44, first raised his criticism of the soap in the House of Commons on Tuesday during a debate on the Automated Vehicles Bill, saying: ‘Milton Keynes is a beautiful, vibrant city that is going places – to everyone except, perhaps, the producers of last night’s EastEnders.’
He also came out fighting on X, formerly Twitter, posting ‘You want some, do ya? Eh?’ along with a still of a scene from EastEnders, and adding ‘I’ll always stand up for MK’.
Yesterday Mr Everitt said he was disappointed to see ‘our great city’ depicted as ‘rundown, dilapidated and grotty’. He also told the Milton Keynes Citizen the ‘producers owe an apology to the people of MK for this negative portrayal’.
In an interview on the BBC’s Three Counties Radio he went further, saying the depiction was ‘completely uncharacteristic’ – and urged the producers to ‘find a way of projecting the better sides of Milton Keynes’. He suggested a storyline could be written with characters visiting Willen Lake – a visitor attraction and public park which is a popular spot for walking and also offers pedalo hire and watersports including kayaking.
Mr Everitt admitted that ‘like every city we’ve got parts that aren’t as good as the others’ but said but the characterisation of Milton Keynes in EastEnders was ‘completely out of order’.
One viewer, who has lived in Milton Keynes since the 1970s and was named only as Arthur, told Three Counties Radio his wife was so shocked by the soap that she changed channels. He said: ‘They’ve chosen my city, my home, as a place to depict as being a slum.’
Destination Milton Keynes, the city’s official tourism service, said it was ‘a thriving, multi-cultural community with more than 6,000 acres of free green spaces for residents and visitors to enjoy and with a booming visitor economy worth over £230 million a year’. The BBC declined to comment.
‘Completely uncharacteristic’